Janin Afken and Andreas Krass, Humboldt-Univ. zu Berlin; Benedikt Wolf, Univ. Bielefeld; Nimrod Levin and Moshe Sluhovsky, Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem (Web)

Venue: Berlin
Time: 14.-16.11.2019
Proposals by: 30.06.2019

This is a call for papers dealing with the similarities, differences, and entanglements of queer and Jewish migration experiences and their ideological and cultural dimensions, as well as antisemitic and homo-/transphobic narratives of Jewish and/or queer ‘unrootedness’.

In both Jewish and LGBT experience in history, issues of displacement, re-settling, and migration have played a decisive role. A dominant narrative of Jewish history, if not its most prominent one, tells of the loss of Jerusalem as a center, subsequent centuries of diaspora and expulsions from European countries, then the shattering, during the Shoah, of the hopes for a livable consolidation of diasporic existence, and finally the formation of a Jewish state in the Promised Land. One dominant narrative of LGBT biographies tells of expulsion and escape from home, and then migration to metropolises like San Francisco, Berlin, or Tel Aviv, where LGBTs can be themselves, and join a community that would function as their new home. These narratives of displacement and resettlement have been embraced and celebrated by both Zionists and gay liberation activists, just as much as they have also been criticized and condemned by anti-Zionists and some queer theorists.

Scholars like Daniel Boyarin, Daniel Itzkovitz and Ann Pelligrini, among others, have discussed aspects of the relation between Queerness and Jewishness. The issue of Queer Migration has also been discussed by scholars like Kath Weston and Jack Halberstam and in GLQ’s special issue on ‘Queer/Migration’. Until today … read more and source … (Web)-