Plenaries and Featured Events
Plenary Speaker - Dr. Nikki Lane
Thursday, March 9
“How to Find a Black Lesbian: Black Lesbian Lives, Representation, and the Quare Linguistic Approach”
What does it mean to find other Black women who are “like that”? In other words, what does it mean for Black lesbians to embark on journeys of finding one another? In this talk, I offer preliminary analysis of data from ongoing ethnographic work for my next book project. The data I share include portions of oral histories from Black lesbians who served in the US military before the introduction of the policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” To put it simply, these women were not supposed to exist in the US military, and lived and worked under the constant threat of their livelihoods being taken away if anyone discovered either their identities and/or lesbian sexual practices. These oral histories demonstrate the linguistic and cultural dimensions of the Black lesbian socio-linguistic practice of searching for other Black women who are “like that” in a context where they should not be in the first place. I refer to this practice as socio-linguistic in nature, because it relies on a specific linguistic repertoire that utilizes strategic forms of silence and indirectness as well as euphemism and Black vernacular speech queered in service of the unique experiences of Black women in a given context. I will pair this analysis with archival material from a magazine called Women in the Life published by a Black lesbian in DC which circulated throughout the US during the early 1990s to early 2000s. The magazine allowed Black lesbians across the country to find one another, and it is this self-reflexive transmission of knowledge about Black lesbians by Black lesbians which I contrast with representations of the oftentimes singular Black lesbian in popular television over the last 20 years. The talk synthesizes early insights from my ongoing work with the intention of sharing methodological, theoretical, and practical approaches to doing what I refer to as Quare Linguistic Anthropological work.
Dr. Nikki Lane is an interdisciplinary scholar trained as a Cultural and Linguistic Anthropologist. Her work explores issues related to American Popular Culture, African American language practices, and sexual cultures throughout the African
Diaspora. She is an Assistant Professor in Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at Duke University.
In her writing, research, classrooms, and public lectures, she explores the connections between popular culture and critical theories of race, gender, class,and sexuality. Working often along the edges of academia, she makes contemporary critical theory accessible to broad audiences priding herself on putting complex ideas into everyday language anyone can understand. She specializes in using popular culture as an entry point for discussing complex social theory.
Her first book titled The Black Queer Work of Ratchet: Race, Gender, Sexuality, and the (Anti)Politics of Respectability explores the use of the word “ratchet” in a community of Black queer women in Washington, DC.
Featured Panel -
Graduate Student Work-in-Progress Showcase
Graduate Student Work-in-Progress Showcase
Friday, March 10
All conference goers are encouraged to attend the featured graduate work-in-progress session. This year, seven graduate students will be presenting their work for audience feedback on a range of Lavender Language topics
Plenary Speaker - Dr. Luhui Whitebear
Friday, March 10
Resisting the Language of Erasure
Settler colonial paradigms ask us to create, write, and dream within the confines of colonial languages. Even as we strive to move beyond binary thinking and imagine more inclusive identity labels for gender and sexuality, the terms of what those labels are primarily depend on the English language. For Two-Spirit and Indigenous queer people, these confines are a reminder that settler colonial efforts of Indigenous erasure are still in effect. This talk discusses the ways in which Two-Spirit and Indigenous queer people are reclaiming identities and roles within respective communities through language revitalization and reclamation. These efforts are crucial to interrupting settler colonial systems that control all of our lives.
Dr. Luhui Whitebear (she/her) is an enrolled member of the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation with Huestec and Cochimi ancestry. She is an assistant professor in the School of Language, Culture, and Society (Indigenous Studies) and has served as the Center Director of the Kaku-Ixt Mana Ina Haws at Oregon State University. Institutionally Luhui serves on the core leadership of the President’s Commission on Indigenous Affairs, the Bias Response Team, and on Faculty Senate representing the College of Liberal Arts. In the community, she serves as the co-chair of the Corvallis School Board, as the Vice President of the OSBA Caucus of Color, on the MMIW USA board, and on the Oregon Women’s Foundation board. Luhui is a mother, poet, and activist engaged in community-based work. Dr. Whitebear received her PhD from Oregon State University (OSU) in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; MA from OSU in Interdisciplinary Studies; BS degrees from OSU in Anthropology and in Ethnic Studies. Her research focuses on California Indigenous studies, Indigenous feminisms, Indigenous rhetorics, Indigenous activism, MMIW, national law & policy, and Indigenous land & water rights.
Plenary Roundtable -
Lavender Languages Past, Present, and Future
Lavender Languages Past, Present, and Future
Saturday, March 11
From historical roots to current trends and future projections, this panel will provide a broad look at the ways in which Lavender Languages has developed as a field and where we want to see it move in the future. Panelists representing a diverse range of career stages, research interests, and personal experiences will reflect on the changes in the field, its strengths and shortcomings, and hopes for the future of Lavender Linguistics. With a focus on both the past and the future, this panel will provide a space for critical discussion and insights into the intersection of language, gender, and sexuality.
Moderator: Archie Crowley (University of South Carolina)
Panelists: Bill Leap (American University and Florida Atlantic University), Lucy Jones (University of Nottingham), Kirby Conrod (Swarthmore College), Dozandri Mendoza (UC Santa Barbara), Joel Jenkins (Indiana University, Bloomington)
Additional Featured Events
Book Talk: Everything I learned, I learned in a Chinese Restaurant
Thursday, March 9
Curtis Chin
Writer and filmmaker Curtis Chin will read an excerpt from his upcoming memoir from Little, Brown. "Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant" traces the author's journey through 1980's Detroit as he navigated rising xenophobia, the AIDS epidemic, and the Reagan Revolution to find his voice as a writer and activist — all set against the backdrop of his family's popular Chinese restaurant. After the reading, participants will be able to ask questions about language and how it is used to navigate intersectional spaces. For more information about the book, please go to curtisfromdetroit.com
Redoing Linguistic Worlds –
Book Launch and Presentation
Book Launch and Presentation
Friday, March 10
Eric Louis Russell and Kris Aric Knisley, Eds.
We are thrilled to launch Redoing Linguistic Worlds: Unmaking gender binaries, remaking gender pluralities (Multilingual Matters) at Lavender Languages 2023! This edited volume brings together ten chapters written by sixteen authors who are re-shaping the scholarship on the ways that we concomitantly do language and gender through the description and analysis of what it means to redo worlds – specifically, the worlds made and remade by non-Anglophone languagers who confront entrenched binaries of gender, its modalities, and its enlanguagements. This panel will introduce the project, overview individual chapters, and open up space for questions concerning languaging beyond binarity. A pre-order discount code for #RedoingLinguisticWorlds will be available to conference attendees.
Panelists:
Eric Lous Russell (UC Davis), Kris Aric Knisely (Univ of Arizona), Alba Arias Alvarez (Universidad di Alcalá), Michael Barnes (Univ of Birmingham), Sheryl Bernardo-Hinsely (Western Washington Univ), Angineh Djavadghazaryans (Oakland Univ), Maureen Gallagher (Australian National Univ), Ben Papadopoulos (UC Berkeley), Likndsay Preseau (Iowa State Univ), Faye Stewart (Univ North Carolina, Greensboro)
Rural Voices: Queer Experience in Idaho
Friday, March 10
Dr. Lisa McClain, Boise State University
Boise, Idaho, the conference host city, is the only major metropolitan area in the state. But what happens if you are an LGBTQ+ person who lives in one of the other 71,570 sq. miles in this 14th largest state in the US? The most visible and vocal model of LGBTQ+ identity is one centered on urban areas, political activism, and an “out and proud” queer identity. For decades, LGBTQ+ people in Idaho have assumed that if you are going to be LGBTQ+ in this state, you come to Boise. Archival evidence, letters, photographs, newspaper articles, and oral histories reveal, however, that LGBTQ+ people have lived in rural Idaho for well over a century, and it is often no secret within their communities. LGBTQ+ folk choose to live in small towns or in the mountains, drawn by the quality of rural life and family/community heritage. Contrary to expectations, many people report feelings of safety and support within their communities. By exploring the many places and spaces throughout Idaho where LGBTQ+ people stayed, came home to, traveled through, created, or used temporarily to find one another, we can envision alternative models of LGBTQ+ experience and community building as LGBTQ+ people shaped the lives they chose.