October 21, 2019
InQueery 2019 took place at the Elson S. Floyd Cultural Center in Pullman on October 21 with close to 100 people attending. This year’s theme was Queering Disability: Dialogue and Change at the Intersections, and the symposium welcomed Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha as keynote speaker.
Graduate and undergraduate students shared their findings and original research on gender and sexuality in presentation sessions that kicked off the conference. In one session, Erin Manning presented on the importance of Tumblr to the queer community, Acacia Kapusta discussed how the media desexualizes disabled people, and Kimberly Chapin shared research about mental health among LGBTQ individuals.
In a concurrent session, more WSU graduate and undergraduate students presented their research on themes related to Queering Disability. Paulina Abustan shared and connected the resistance of queer, femme, crip Pilipinx people with the resistance of people of color of Turtle Island. Abustan’s talk was followed by Kyle Schofield, Steven Hobaica, Alexander Jensen, Carrie Cuttler’s discussion of the effects of labels on perceptions of LGBTQ individuals.
After the concurrent sessions, attendees and presenters gathered for a dinner before turning their attention to keynote speaker Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, who described her work as a queer disabled femme writer and disability justice movement worker. Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarazinha is a writer, organizer, performance artist and educator of Burgher/Tamil Sri Lankan and Irish/Roma ascent. She is the author of Tonguebreaker, Bridge of Flowers, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home, Bodymap, and Consensual Genocide.
First initiated by students in the Department of Women’s Studies over a decade ago, InQueery is an annual event that brings together scholars, students, and WSU community members to envision the future of queer theory and politics. InQueery 2019 was co-sponsored by the Program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, GIESORC, and the Women*s Center at WSU.