LGBTQA+ Lecture and Symposium

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — In honor of LGBTQA+ history month in October, The University of Alabama’s College of Arts and Sciences is hosting an LGBTQA+ symposium with keynote lecturer Dr. Jeffrey McCune, an associate professor of women, gender, sexual studies and African and African American studies at Washington University in St. Louis.

The symposium “Our Lives: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” begins Wednesday, Oct. 12 at 5:30 p.m. in Gorgas Library, room 205. Dr. McCune will speak in the same location Thursday, Oct. 13 at 4 p.m. The symposium and lecture are free and open to the public.

According to Dr. David Deutsch, UA associate professor of English, who helped organize the event, the symposium will consider the wide range of creative and analytical research being done in LGBTQA+ areas across the campus.

More than 16 students and faculty will showcase their works—from photographs and theatrical performances to creative writing.

McCune’s lecture “The Queerness of Blackness” will then explore the wedge between the white queer movement and the larger black struggle.

“I think the audience will benefit from his insights into the intersection of race, sexuality, variations in conceptions of masculinity and aesthetic representations of American culture in the 20th and 21st centuries,” Deutsch said.

McCune is the author of the book, “Sexual Discretion: Black Masculinity and the Politics of Sexual Passing.” He is also a member of the Black Sexual Economics Group and the Black Performance Theory Consortium and serves on the editorial boards of Text and Performance Quarterly, Journal of Homosexuality, and Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men.

He has made contributions to multiple anthologies and journals. McCune is also a playwright and director, and his play “Dancin’ the Down Low” was recently selected for publication in an anthology. He is presently finishing a play, “An Archive of Violence,” which addresses the “everydayness” of violence within and around black communities in America.