Annual Report 2007

CHiCS: Academic Think Tanks and ressource centers: Production of Knowledge

Part 4: Academic Activities 2007

Our academic activities currently consist of 4 independent conference cycles: Aids in Culture: Explorations in the Cultural History of AIDS every year in December, which seeks to examine cultural responses to AIDS in different cultures and societies across a wide range of perspectives. The conference explores the processes by which AIDS is constructed as a cultural phenomenon and how different societies in their encounters with AIDS attempt to create meaning in health, illness and disease, The Queer Studies Easter Sympsium, every year in the week following Easter, which aims at exploring recent developments in theory and method in Queer studies as well as the broad themes of sexual diversities through time and space, gender constructions, sex-gender subjectivities, and sexual identity constructions, Our Summer Conference, which interrogates storytelling, memories and identity constructions from a wide range of perspectives, definitions and in their manifold cultural and social manifestations. And finally the Chimalpahin Conference which is devoted to colonial and post colonial remembering and forgetfulness viewed from a wide range of different interdisciplinary perspectives with particular attention to communicative issues and reflections on „self“ and „otherness“, memories, historical myths and other expressions of historical and political memory.

The conferences aim at bringing together academics working in all relevant disciplines as well as activists, artists and other professionals, and promoting innovative multidisciplinary and multicultural exchange and dialogue. We do not just create bridges and an independent forum for exchange between the social movements, but also an extended understanding of diversity in its most extended meaning, through an ongoing permanent dialogue and exchange which is the only way to deal with diversity in a globalized world where there are no definitive answers.

1) to stimulate and advocate innovative investigations within the humanities and the social sciences about diversity related issues, and promote perspectives from the humanities and social sciences within the broader research community, as well as encourage dialogue and exchange between researchers, activists, professionals, students, artists, organizations, public institutions, government agencies and the general public. 

2) to make the information generated in the conferences and in our research activities available to a global audience through publication of the conference proceedings, and related articles, as well as through our outreach activities. 

3) to provide a global forum for dialogue and debate, where diverse voices from all over the world can come together, make connections, discuss topics of mutual interest and develop new ideas across linguistic, cultural and academic barriers, and where scientists in the humanities and social sciences working with diversity related topics can meet and communicate about their work.

4) to develop an extensive body of scientific literature on cultural responses to globalisation, diversity issues and cultural contact which can be used by policy makers who decide to take the importance of cultural factors into consideration. 

The Annual Aids in Culture Conference: Explorations in the Cultural History of Aids

AIDS is not simply an illness or a biomedical phenomenon. The organization „AIDSinCulture.org“ founded and co-sponsored by Enkidu Magazine in Mexico City and the International Society for Cultural History and Cultural Studies (CHiCS) in cooperation with CNDH (The National Human Rights Commission in Mexico) seeks to examine cultural responses to AIDS in different cultures and societies across a wide range of perspectives. The conference will explore the processes by which AIDS is constructed as a cultural phenomenon and how different societies in their encounters with AIDS attempt to create meaning in health, illness and disease. The conference aims at bringing together academics working in all relevant disciplines as well as activists, artists and other professionals, and promoting innovative multidisciplinary and multicultural exchange and dialogue.

The conference cycle AIDS in Culture has already developed into an annual tradition and will be organized for the fifth time in 2008 in Mexico City. In 2004 Aids in Culture took place in the National Center for Human Rights (CNDH) in Mexico City and had artistic and aesthetic responses to AIDS/HIV as a special focus. The Artist of the Conference was Rolando de la Rosa -Mexican sculptor and painter-. In 2005 AIDS in Culture II was held in the Archivo Histórico Santamaría in the city of Papantla in the Mexican Federal State of Veracruz. The second edition of the conference cycle had Indigenous knowledge and conceptions of AIDS in Latin America, Africa and New Guinea as its core theme. The Artist of the Conference was Morgan Alexander -American photo-ethnographer-. 

In 2006 AIDS in Culture III returned to Mexico City. The conference was organized in a large number of special thematic sessions covering a diverse series of topics extending from „The History of AIDS Activism“, "Representations of Aids in Literature", "Aids in Education" to "The Politics of Aids and Aids in Politics" and "Perceptions of Aids in Lesbian Sub-Cultures in Mexico". The artist of the conference was Arturo Ramirez Juárez, Mexican painter, who died of AIDS in 1987. 

In 2007 the conference activities took place both in the National Human Rights Comission in Mexico City and in Hotel del Portal in the city of Puebla. The conference had a special focus on Aids and Otherness and Aids in narratives of identities. Many of the papers presented in 2007 addressed issues related to translations between cultures and re-negotiations and re-constructions of cultural identities in one one way or another in relation to AIDS and HIV. In 2007 the conference exhibitions were Vihda y Draguería – Life & Dragness by Antonio Marquet from Mexico and The Experiences of HIV/AIDS for Mothers by Samia Omar, originally from Kenya.

The Queer Studies Easter Symposium in Mexico City

The first international academic conference ever with a pronounced focus on Queer Studies in Mexico was organised by Enkidu Magazine in June 2004 and had the title „Competing Diversities“. This conference had an overwhelming response both locally and internationally and brought together a very colourful crowd of scholars from all over the world, representing a wide range of disciplines. The discussions in the auditorium in Centro Medico Siglo XXI (A conference center by the Mexican Ministry of Health) consequently crossed disciplinary boundaries and stimulated and generated considerable fresh rethinking and reconsideration of many topics, in particular regarding the interaction between traditional gender identities and modern western identity constructions, which was the main focus of this first conference. In 2005, Enkidu Magazine organized its traditional Humanities conference in the UPN, the National Mexican University of Educational Sciences and dedicated a conference stream of 6 panel sessions to Queer Studies. The papers presented at this conference also displayed a wide range of innovative Queer Scholarship, in particular in studies representing interpretative approaches within the social sciences and humanities.

Both conferences reminded us that while Queer Studies has still no institutional presence in Mexico, and most of Latin America, and the subject is generally absent and invisible in universities in this part of the world, there is a growing academic interest in Queer Studies and several exiting dissertations and research projects are under development but usually in isolation from each other, and without any forum where these studies could be presented.

Encouraged by these experiences, Enkidu Magazine established the Annual Queer Studies Easter Symposium as a permanent forum for global exchange and dialogue between scholars as well as a professional meeting point for international networking within the field. The first Queer Studies Easter Symposium finally took place in April 2007 in Teatro Arlequin in Mexico City. The conference united 118 speakers from more than 30 countries. The program was organised in a large number of special thematic sessions and sub-conferences covering a highly diverse series of topics extending from, for example, a special session on „Sexual Diversities in the Islamic World" to "The History of GLBT Activism", "Sexual Diversities and Disabilities", "Traditional sexualities and western gender and sexual identity constructions" and "Ethnographic studies of eroticism & fetishism".

The multicultural and multilingual environment of the conference in 2007 stimulated considerable exiting and eye-opening discussions in particular about how colonialism, post-colonialism, nationalism, and globalisation have reshaped conceptions and perceptions of sex, gender, and sexuality in different societies and how Queer Studies as an interdisciplinary field of study can contribute to highly diverse and innovative readings and re-readings of literatures, cultures, and societies. The conference also raised the issue about interaction and networking between queer activism and queer scholarship and a stream of roundtable discussions on various topics throughout the conference where both activists and academics participated, focused on contemporary social and political issues in various societies and the past, present and future of the global LGBT/Q  Movements.  

Enkidu Summer Conference: Identities in Transition 2007

The primary focus of this inclusive and interdisciplinary conference organized by Enkidu Magazine and the International Society for Cultural History and Cultural Studies (CHiCS) in Mexico City was to interrogate storytelling, memories and identity constructions from a wide range of perspectives, definitions and in their manifold cultural and social manifestations. In 2007, the conference had  a special focus on Identities in Transition and spaces, and narratives of identities. The Commitee selected papers for presentation that addressed remembering and forgetting of the past as well as translations between cultures and re-negotiations and re-constructions of cultural identities in one one way or another. The conference sessions were held in the Café Tercera Llamada of Teatro Arlequin in Mexico City and united academics from all over the world. 

"Identities in Transition" continued the tradition established by the previous held events in this conference cycle which has developed into an annual academic tradition in Mexico City, bringing together participants from all over the world to share and exchange their research, experiences and ideas in a truly multicultural, multilingual and interdisciplinary academic environment: Masculinities: New Perspectives (2004), Competing Diversities (2005), and Testimonial Texts: Stories, Lives and Memories (2006).