Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

David Halperin Lecture, Com Building RECITAL HALL, 7:00, Monday 15 October 2007

David Halperin is W. H. Auden Collegiate Professor of the History and Theory of Sexuality at the University of Michigan. His research interests include:the history and theory of homosexuality; classical studies and its relation to contemporary cultural history; gay men's social practices and cultural identifications.

Read about his book Saint Foucault

In his groundbreaking work How to Do the History of Homosexualty (2002) David M. Halperin revisits and refines the argument he put forward in his classic One Hundred Years of Homosexuality: that hetero- and homosexuality are not biologically constituted but are, instead, historically and culturally produced. How to Do the History of Homosexuality expands on this view, updates it, answers its critics, and makes greater allowance for continuities in the history of sexuality. Above all, Halperin offers a vigorous defense of the historicist approach to the construction of sexuality, an approach that sets a premium on the description of other societies in all their irreducible specificity and does not force them to fit our own conceptions of what sexuality is or ought to be.Dealing both with male homosexuality and with lesbianism, this study imparts to the history of sexuality a renewed sense of adventure and daring. It recovers the radical design of Michel Foucault's epochal work, salvaging Foucault's insights from common misapprehensions and making them newly available to historians, so that they can once again provide a powerful impetus for innovation in the field. Far from having exhausted Foucault's revolutionary ideas, Halperin maintains that we have yet to come to terms with their startling implications. Exploring the broader significance of historicizing desire, Halperin questions the tendency among scholars to reduce the history of sexuality to a mere history of sexual classifications instead of a history of human subjectivity itself. Finally, in a theoretical tour de force, Halperin offers an altogether new strategy for approaching the history of homosexuality—one that can accommodate both ruptures and continuities, both identity and difference in sexual experiences across time and space.

Becoming a Man in 127 Easy Steps-OPEN DRESS REHEARSAL

•••Newly added: an opportunity to see Scott and fabulous director Steve Bailey in action as they fine-tune the performance the night before the Friday show. Q+A afterwards.

8pm COM Experimental Theater • you do need to get a ticket beforehand, though students are free.

[Steve Bailey is the education director and a founder of Jump-Start Performance Co. in San Antonio, Texas. He was the founder and director of 24th Street Experiment Theater Company, research coordinator for Theater Communications Group, and artist-in-residence with Teatro del Sol in Lima, Peru. Over the past thirty years, Steve Bailey has created and/or directed over fifty original productions that have been presented in the U.S. and Latin America. He is also an arts educator who has worked with numerous youth and adult groups in a variety of community settings.]

• and read a great interview with Steve about his work here.

Feminist Video Art of the 70s
Cine-X
Capitol Theater, Friday Nov. 9 at 3:30 PM
1970 / USA / 90 minutes / Digital Video

http://olympiafilmfestival.org/movieDetail.asp?id=44

The 70s were a time of social and technological revolution and women were its leaders. Advanced media technologies emerged in the 70s allowing many artists access to recording equipment in video and film for the first time. The opportunities this new-found access provided coincided with a strong desire amongst many women artists to incorporate the body into various modes of performance. The burgeoning time-based medium of video offered an ideal format for these endeavors, which set the foundation for the crucial role women have played in the development and progression of film and video over the past thirty-five years.

Join Colleen Dixon and Bridget Irish as they take you on a journey through an abbreviated survey of 70s feminist film and video art. Five seminal short works will be introduced and discussed in their historical and social context – audience participation is encouraged.

Vertical Roll
1972 / 20 min / b&w / sound
Director: Joan Jonas

Female Sensibility
1973 / 14 min / color / sound
Director: Lynda Benglis

Through the Large Glass
1976 / 10 min / color / silent / 16 mm film
Director: Hannah Wilke

The East Is Red, The West Is Bending
1977 / 20 min / color / sound
Director: Martha Rosler

Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman
1978-79 / 6 min / color / sound
Director: Dara Birnbaum

Distributor web site: http://www.eai.org