York’s Centre for Research on Latin America & the Caribbean (CERLAC), Latin American & Caribbean Studies Program, Sexuality Studies Program, Department of Sociology and the Graduate Program in Women’s Studies presented "Theorizing Gay and Lesbian Writing in the Caribbean and Latin America" with Thomas Glave and Juanita Diaz-Cott on Thursday, February 26 from 2 to 4pm in 280 York Lanes.
Thomas Glave is the 2008-2009 Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professor in Writing and Humanistic Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He grew up in the Bronx and in Kingston, Jamaica. While in Jamaica, he worked on issues of social justice and helped found the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG). He is the author of a collection of short stories, Whose Song? and Other Stories (2001); a collection of critical essays, Words To Our Now: Imagination and Dissent (2005); the editor of an anthology, Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles (2008); and most recently the author of the acclaimed novel, The Torturer’s Wife (2009). He is an O. Henry award-winning author and was named a “Writer on the Verge” by The Village Voice in 2000. He also received the Lambda Literary Award for Non-fiction for Words to our Now.
Juanita Díaz-Cotto is a professor of sociology, women’s studies, and Latin American & Caribbean Studies at the State University of New York at Binghamton. She was born in Puerto Rico and raised between Puerto Rico and New York City. Active in human rights struggles for over 30 years – including those of women, lesbians and gays, prisoners, and people of colour inside and outside the US – she considers herself both an activist and an academic. She is the author of Chicana Lives and Criminal Justice: Voices from El Barrio (2006); Gender, Ethnicity and the State: Latina and Latino Prison Politics (1996); the editor, under the pseudonym of Juanita Ramos, of Compañeras: Latina Lesbians (An Anthology), Lesbianas Latinoamericanas (3rd edition, 2004); and most recently the editor of Sinister Wisdom 74: Latina Lesbians (2008).
For more information e-mail [email protected].