QGRAD CONFERENCE: (Re)Mapping Queer Mobilities

The UCLA LGBT Studies Department hosted its first QGrad Conference in 1999. Since then, QGrad has brought together the best research from graduate students across the country.

For more information and to register, visit the conference website:http://qgradconference.com/

The 2016 conference will be held on Friday, October 28. This year’s conference theme, “(Re)mapping Queer Mobilities,” explores and examines the old, new and shifting landscapes of LGBTQ space and movement—leaving home/re-making home, transnational migration, locating and dis-locating queer spaces, and seeking sexual encounters in cyberspace.  As cities across the United States experience demographic and socio-economic shifts, many point to gentrification as the principal threat to LGBTQ and other historically marginalized communities. Queer enclaves have long offered the LGBTQ community a safe counter-space in which to live and love, socialize and organize.

Formal and informal media outlets have been quick to implicate gentrification as the driving factor in the “ghosting of gayborhoods.” This is but one of the multiple factors that help us deconstruct the new and changing ways queer communities move, mobilize and re-make space. We seek to understand displacement and human connection between the material and digital worlds: urban, suburban, and rural communities; nightclubs and organizing spaces; dating apps and social media.

Co-sponsored by the UCLA LGBT Studies Program, the UCLA Social Sciences Division, the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, the UCLA Humanities Division, the UCLA César E. Chavez Department of Chicana/o Studies, the David Bohnett Foundation, and the UCLA Department of Gender Studies