The Queer Limit of Black Memory: A Celebration of the Scholarship of Matt Richardson

As the first monograph to explore Black lesbian literature, The Queer Limit of Black Memory's interventions have reverberations across lesbian studies, performance studies, social justice, issues of racial equity, and trans studies. Ten years later, we return to The Queer Limit in a political climate where queer sexuality, gender expression, and trans bodies - in bathrooms, in entertainment, in our schools - are targeted as objects of American fear and right-wing legislation.

Homophobia, transphobia, and anti-Blackness are explicitly central to Western political discourse. Now, as the US approaches the political campaign season for upcoming elections in 2024, it is time we reckon with these attacks on Black trans and queer bodies using intersectional feminist methodologies. We in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and our co-sponsors in the Departments of English, History, the Program in Black Women's Studies, and in ARHU's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, are convening, transforming, and offering space for UMD's diverse community to discuss how race, gender, and feminism matters to LGBTQ rights, people, and political elections across the country. We will consider how the queer limits articulated by Richardson a decade ago converge on this fraught moment for Blackness, transness, and the many other intersections of gender and sexuality still entering into the frame.

This is a hybrid event. Please RSVP to the in-person portion of the event to receive lunch during the event.