Beyond the Strai(gh)ts: Transnationalism and Queer Chinese Politics

Scholars, artists and activists from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the US explore the impact of cross-border exchanges on queer organizing and sexual cultures. New films and artwork will be premiered. The conference is free and open to the public.

Museum Theater, Berkeley Art Museum, 2621 Durant Avenue

April 29-30, 2005 University of California, Berkeley

Friday 29 April
2:15pm	Welcome: Judith Butler, UC Berkeley
2:30-3:45pm	Keynote: Josephine Ho, Center for the Study of Sexualities, Taiwan “Queer Existence under Global Governance: A Taiwan Exemplar” Yanhai Wan, AIZHIXING Institute of Health Education, Beijing “AIZHI and New Gay and Lesbian Organizing in China” Respondent: Lisa Rofel, UCSC
4:00 – 5:45pm	Zien Cui, Beijing Film Academy “The Communist International of Queer Film” Nguyen Tan Hoang, UC Berkeley "I Got this Way from Eating Rice: Gay Asian Documentary & the Re-Education of Desire” Guo-Juin Hong, Duke University “Memorandum on Happiness: Taiwan’s Tongzhi Movement in Mickey Chen’s Documentaries”
Dinner Break
7:00 - 8:30pm	Film Premieres: “Women’s 30 Minutes” (dir. Shi Tou, Beijing) “Star Appeal” (dir. Zien Cui, Beijing)
Saturday 30 April
9:30-10:00am	Coffee and Refreshments
10:00 – 11:00am	JiaZhen Ni, Gender/Sexuality Rights Association Taiwan (G/SRAT) “AIDS prevention and sexual stigma” Xiaopei He, University of Westminster, UK “New AIDS activism in China”
Break/Film	“K.I.P.” and “The Calling” (dir. Nguyen Tan Hoang, USA)
11:30am – 12:30pm	Ping Wang & Yu-Rong Chen, G/SRAT, Taiwan “The Three Obstacles to Queer Rights” Chung To, Chi Heng Foundation, Hong Kong “Activism and the Internet”
12:30 – 12:45pm	Institute for Tongzhi Studies and Community outreach (open mic)
Lunch Break
2:00 - 3:15pm	Shi Tou, artist, activist, Beijing “Tongzhi Public Space” Respondent: Tze-lan D. Sang, University of Oregon Karen Tongson, University of Southern California & Lynne Chan aka JJ Chinois, artist, NY “A Conversation”
Break/Film	“Pirated!” and “Forever Bottom!” (dir. Nguyen Tan Hoang, USA)
3:45 - 4:45pm	Naifei Ding, National Central University, Taiwan “Imagining Sex: Concubinage, the ‘New Woman,’ and Universal Chastity” David Eng, Rutgers University “Freud in China”
5:30 – 5:45pm	Roundtable

An exhibition of selected works of the Beijing artist Shi Tou will be open to the pubic throughout the weekend within the Berkeley Art Museum (adjacent to the Museum Theatre).

Organizers: Roy Chan, Tamara Chin, Virginia Eleasar, Petrus Liu

Press Contact: Petrus Liu (Rzbkl@yahoo.com), Tamara Chin (tchin@socrates.berkeley.edu)

Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Sexual Cultures, the Institute of East Asian Studies, the Center for Chinese Studies, Comparative Literature, Women's Studies, International and Area Studies, the Dean of Humanities, the Townsend Center, the Center for Race and Gender, the Dean of Social Sciences, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Consortium for the Arts, Institute of Tongzhi Studies, Fridae

In recent years, transnational flows of people, information, images, and capital radically changed the lives and organizations of queer people in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. How do queer people in these regions today organize their communities and futures in an era marked by transnational corporations, bootleg DVDs, internet chatrooms, migrant workers, inter-asia human rights organizations, "flexible citizenship," sex tourism, the Chinese diaspora, minority studies in Asia, and new cinematic and literary modes of cultural exchange? What engagements have there been, or should there be, be with US queer politics, and Asian-American and racial politics in particular? How have transnational norms, themselves been shaped by queer forms of exchange? This conference aims to bring to a US audience seventeen scholars, activists, and cultural producers whose work has been critical in queer transformations in China and Taiwan, and to engage them in dialogue with important US based queer scholars and artists. Shifting the focus of comparison from the governmental role of individual states, it will ask both overseas and US participants how they perceive existing -and future- transnational processes to affect queer organizing and political discourses both within and beyond the local. We hope this forum will also enable a critical discussion of the relations between Asian American and tongzhi (Chinese lgbt) politics. In conjunction with the conference we will be premiering new queer Chinese films and artwork by Shi Tou, Cui Zien, Hoang Tan Nguyen, and Lynne Chan.