EVE KOSOFSKY SEDGWICK

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FEBRUARY 25-26, 2010: SPANKING AND POETRY CONFERENCE, CUNY

From the call for proposals:

“When I was a child the two most rhythmic things that happened to me were spanking and poetry.” (Tendencies 182)

Eve Sedgwick lovingly, if none too gently, slapped open the sphincter-tight boundary rings of critical scholarship on the sexual and affective relations between bodies. This conference invites continued play with the tools she created for examination of “all the different surfaces that make a self for most of us, printed pages, ‘our’ ideas, institutional relations and activism, vibrations of a voice, the gaping abstractions and distractions of creativity, the weird holographic projections of our names and public personae, the visible and impressible extent of the parts of our bodies” (Tendencies 104-05). We welcome paper proposals on any aspect or application of her critical, literary, and artistic work, inviting scholars to broadly consider and reconsider Sedgwick’s intersections with and influences upon their fields. In the spirit of her own perversion of academic style, we particularly encourage proposals that expand the boundaries of the conventional conference paper through experimental or creative critical practices. We also seek papers engaging with Sedgwick’s pedagogical practices and proposals, as expressed in her written work or as performed in her classes at The Graduate Center or other institutions.

The Spanking and Poetry conference was nearly canceled due to an unexpected snowstorm that shut down much of the city—including the CUNY Graduate Center, where the conference was to be held. Many incoming flights were delayed or canceled, and keynote speakers Jonathan Goldberg and Michael Moon were unable to get to the city. Thanks to the efforts of the conference’s organizers, Tracy Riley and Margaret Galvan, CUNY agreed to open its doors for an informal plenary session. Around fifty people made their way through the snowy streets to attend a lively and moving series of panels. Attendee and presenter Mia Chen wrote an in-depth review of the conference here.

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EVE'S BENCH

Some time ago, before Eve was so ill, I asked her if there was some kind of memorial that she might like. She told me that she liked the idea of a bench in a pretty spot, where friends could sit and enjoy the view. Recently I made a donation to Madison Square Park, which is at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street and is the prettiest little park that I know of here in the city. In return, they have now put up a plaque for Eve on a bench that I selected there. Many years ago Eve had told me a quote from Chaucer that she would like to use as an epitaph, and it is on the plaque. — Hal

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ONGOING: TENDENCIES POETRY SERIES

This series of talks by and about contemporary poets, curated by Tim Peterson (Trace) and titled in honor of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, explores the relationship between queer theory, contemporary poetic practice, manifesto, and pedagogy.

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OCTOBER 2009: HONORING EVE SYMPOSIUM AT BOSTON UNIVERSITY

Text taken from the Honoring Eve website.

A day of rich intellectual exchange in honor of the memory of Professor Sedgwick, the “soft-spoken queen of gay studies,” the “‘primum mobile’ of queer theory,” and one of the most gifted writers of our time. Eve taught at Boston University in the early 1980s and there are still many there who remember her from those years. BU hosted many of her old friends and newer fans for a day of remembrance and celebration.

The ID 450 Collective, whose name and genesis was inspired by Eve, began as a study group on published feminist thinking, but when we started writing ourselves-also instigated by Eve-we broadened the subject considerably with our own disparate imaginations and experiences, a project that was simultaneously happening within the feminist movement in the 1980s. But while feminist activists were fighting about differences among us, we were having a lot of fun exploring those differences. When Eve was with us from 1982-84 (plus a bit in 1986-87, 1991, and once in 2008), we staged an all-night meeting discussing our first sexual experience with a human at a Howard Johnson’s motel room in the Fenway; we ordered ID 450 T-shirts and then jackets with “feminist” names such as “Tang” and “Dreamwhip”; we published some of our writings in a lesbian sex magazine called Bad Attitude, which no one mentioned on her vita; we discussed ways to escape binary thinking on Eve’s lawn in Amherst (at Eve’s instigation, of course); we cooked and ate sumptuous meals together. After Eve left the group, we wrote autobiographical fragments about our lives for 6 or 7 years, a rich herstorical record of our shared yet different lived experiences as women. When Eve left this world in April, we wrote memorials to her together and formally sent prayers to her in the Bardo, wishing her no pain, and a safe journey to wherever she is resting and playing now.

Videos from the symposium are available here Proceedings from the symposium will be published in a forthcoming issue of Criticism: Quarterly for the Literary Arts.

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SEPTEMBER 26, 2009: CELEBRATING EVE KOSOFSKY SEDGWICK

The Center for the Humanities honors the extraordinary life and work of Graduate Center faculty member Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1950-2009). Her groundbreaking works include Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1986); Epistemology of the Closet (1991); Tendencies (1993); Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (2003); Dialogue on Love (1999); and a book of poems, Fat Art Thin Art (1994).

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