SSSL 2022 Pre-Conference Seminar
Date:
Sunday, June 26, 2022 | 2:30 – 5:30pm ET
Location:
Hyatt Centric Midtown Atlanta, Conference Meeting Space
Facilitator:
Eric Solomon ([email protected])
Co-Facilitators:
Dave Hayward, Paul Fulton, Jr., Charlie Paine, Martin Padgett
Facilitator Biographies:
Eric Solomon, Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies and English at Oxford College, Emory University, will facilitate the seminar and workshop. Solomon received his doctorate in English from Emory University. His first book project, Queer Straits: Desire Lines from the Southernmost, is a cultural history of Key West, Florida in the queer imagination. Solomon serves as co-chair of the Historic Atlanta LGBTQ+ advisory committee and is the series editor of “Queer Intersections” with the open-access peer-reviewed journal Southern Spaces. In October 2021, Solomon launched The #TUOR Project with Dave Hayward of Touching Up Our Roots, an Atlanta-based LGBTQ+ history project in operation since 2002. A work in progress and ongoing digital meeting place, The #TUOR Project explores the sites and spaces, people and places in Atlanta’s modern LGBTQIA+ history.
Joining Solomon to facilitate the workshop is local historian, Touching Up Our Roots co-founder, and #TUOR Project partner Dave Hayward (a resident of Atlanta since 1971), Gay Atlanta Flashback creator Paul Fulton, Jr., and chair of Historic Atlanta’s LGBTQ+ Historic Preservation Advisory Committee Charlie Paine. Martin Padgett, author of A Night at the Sweet Gum Head: Drag, Drugs, Disco, and Atlanta’s Gay Revolution (W.W. Norton, 2021) may also appear to share his research and work in digitizing queer Atlanta history. Additional local-queer activists and digital content producers may also be added to the workshop session as co-facilitators prior to February. All will share their experience and offer feedback on works-in-progress shared by seminar participants.
Call for Papers:
Embracing recent trends in public digital history, “Queer Intersections, Queer Roots: Putting Technology to Work across Southern LGBTQIA+ Spaces” is a pre-conference seminar and workshop that invites scholars to engage with the production and dissemination of queer public history across southern spaces. As Jonas Ingvarsson writes in Towards a Digital Epistemology, “When interfaces are regarded as productive meeting places rather than as representations of something already finished, we can start to realize the imaginary potential of digital tools” (19). This seminar-workshop represents an opportunity or productive meeting place for face-to-face encounter to imagine the potential of the digital interfaces that continue to animate and expand the field of southern-queer study in the twenty-first century. We welcome participants at all stages of development, from topical invention to projects “already finished.”
We welcome digital projects and proposals that ponder the southern-queer intersection in innovative and exciting ways. Such projects might include proposals for podcast pilots or transcripts, critical GIS and cartographic studies, public history tours with a digital component, and critical reflections on the role of digital technologies in literary study. Further, we welcome all scholars interested in southern-queer cultural study to participate. While we hope participants will propose and workshop project ideas that incorporate digital interfaces, we welcome participants who want to learn more about southern-queer studies and discover possibilities for putting technology to work for LGBTQIA+ people across the U.S. South.
Possible topic areas include but are not limited to:
- Digital Public History
- Digital Epistemology
- Digital Pedagogy
- Critical GIS Studies and Digital Tours
- Biometrics of Gender and Sexuality
- Digital Intimacy and Geospatial Dating Applications
- Archives, Digitization, Web Exhibitions
- Podcasts and New Media
- Historic Preservation and Tangible Heritage
To Apply:
Please submit a 250-word abstract and 200-word biography to Eric Solomon ([email protected]) by the deadline below. Those selected will be notified by June 10, 2022. We hope participants will provide a work-in-progress digital project proposal of 500–2,000 words to the organizers by February 1, 2022. Following presentation from the seminar roundtable facilitators, selected workshop participants will be asked to share a 5-10-minute version of their project ideas, read and comment upon projects by other participants, and engage in peer review sessions at the workshop. Successful proposals may be eligible to appear in a potential digital roundtable publication.
In selecting participants, seminar leaders will strive for a diversity of different institutions, academic ranks, and intellectual backgrounds. Graduate students, non-tenure track faculty, and independent scholars are strongly encouraged to apply. There is no additional conference fee for seminar participation.
Contact Info:
Please contact Eric Solomon ([email protected]) if you have any questions.