CFP (RGS-IBG 2019): Thinking geopolitically about sexuality and gender identity with queer theory and beyond

Sneha Krishnan (University of Oxford), Gavin Brown (University of Leicester) and Debanuj Dasgupta (University of Connecticut)

Sponsored by the Space, Sexualities and Queer Research Group

Queer theorists have engaged with debates on borders, nation-states and international relations for some time now (Amar, 2013; Arondekar & Patel, 2016; DasGupta & DasGupta, 2018). They have demonstrated that territorial imaginaries produce heterosexuality and gender binaries as a matter of imperial discourse, most recently in the context of a ‘war on terror’. In disciplinary geography, feminist scholars (Dixon 2016, Hyndman 2004, Smith 2012) have centred bodies, affects and desires, arguing that queer life is necessarily entangled with the lived experience of geopolitics (Koopman, 2011; Tolia-Kelly 2010, Oswin 2015). At the same time, sexual orientation and gender identity have increasingly become directly addressed in foreign policy and matters of diplomatic concern, pursued both by nation-states and supranational organisations such as the United Nations and World Bank (Rao 2014, 2015; Waites 2009). Building on these debates, this session asks two fundamental questions: how might we conceptualise a queer geopolitics? And, how might the geographical study of sexual politics benefit from a closer engagement with critical and feminist geopolitics? We propose geopolitics as an analytical category simultaneously for approaching the contemporary world order, as well as to interrogate sexuality as it is produced through/with statecraft, and in the striving of sexually marginalised communities to create bodily security. 

We invite abstracts for a paper session, as well as expressions of interest for a panel discussion by 28th January 2019. 

Questions that the session will address include: 

•	How do questions about queerness and geography intersect with debates in critical, feminist and decolonial geopolitics? 
•	What are the limits of queer theory for thinking about the geopolitics of sexual orientation and gender identity?
•	Can debates on time from queer and decolonial theory unsettle and allow us to rethink questions on temporality, development and modernity in geopolitics? 
•	How are diverse queer and transgender communities forging cross border, and on the ground strategies in order to create security for themselves? 
•	How can we conceptualise critical approaches to queer migration and refugee studies? How might this allow us to make sense of the experiences of queer and transgender communities in conflict/ war/ post-disaster areas?

References
Amar, P. 2013. The Security Archipelago: Human Security States, Sexuality Politics, and the End of Neoliberalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 
Arondekar, A. and Patel, G., 2016. Area Impossible: Notes toward an Introduction. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 22(2), pp.151-171.
DasGupta, R & DasGupta, D. 2018. Queering Digital India: Activisms, Identities, and Subjectivities. 
London & Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 
Dixon, D. 2016. Feminist Geopolitics: Material States. London: Routledge. 
Hyndman, J., 2004. Mind the gap: bridging feminist and political geography through geopolitics. Political Geography, 23(3), pp.307-322.
Koopman, S. 2011. “Alter-Geopolitics: Other securities are happening.” Geoforum. 42 (3) 274-284. 
Oswin, N., 2015. World, city, queer. Antipode, 47(3), pp.557-565.
Rao, R. (2014), ‘The locations of homophobia’, London Review of International Law, 2(2), 169-199.
Rao, R. (2015), ‘Global homocapitalism’, Radical Philosophy, 194: 38-49.
Smith, S., 2012. Intimate geopolitics: Religion, marriage, and reproductive bodies in Leh, Ladakh. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 102(6), pp.1511-1528.
Tolia-Kelly, D.P., 2010. The geographies of cultural geography I: identities, bodies and race. Progress in human geography, 34(3), pp.358-367. 
Waites, M. (2009). Critique of ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ in human rights discourse: global queer politics beyond the Yogyakarta Principles. Contemporary Politics, 15(1), 137-156

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