Report on Alternative Political Imaginaries and Queer Methodologies events, February
2009
Professor Judith Halberstam, Professor of English at the University of Southern California,
visited Warwick for two interlinked events. The first of these was a workshop, held in the
Reinvention Centre at Westwood, for staff and students with particular research interests
in the area of queer theory. There were 30 participants from a number of universities,
including academic staff, postgraduate and undergraduate students. Judith Halberstam,
herself a leading scholar in the field of gender and sexuality studies, facilitated a lively and
challenging discussion which drew together an array of interdisciplinary concerns. There
was time for informal discussion and networking, some of it whilst taking in the Bob and
Roberta Smith exhibition at the Mead Gallery. The themes and discussion from the
workshop fed into Halberstam’s public lecture, an engaging and timely discussion around
diverse art forms that represent social practices and identities which resist the
identification of a unitary subject. The talk, which was the Centre for the Study of Women
and Gender’s annual lecture, was extremely well received by a large audience of staff and
students from Warwick and beyond. The themes and discussions from the combined
events are being carried forward in the form of Warwick’s new interdisciplinary Queer
Theory Study Group.