ICS Speaker Series: Of Sex and Citizenship

Fall 2008 Speaker Series International Cultural Studies Certificate Program

“Of Sex and Citizenship: The Political Limits to a National Fantasy”

Dr. Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller
Chair of Political Science
University of Hawai'i at Manoa

Civil rights for gays, lesbians, and other sexual citizens in the United States have been limited by public fantasies of the detrimental social costs of this form of legal recognition. These negative projections reached a crescendo in the federal and statewide struggles over rights to same-sex marriage that have occurred in the past decade. In each case but one, this antagonism to civil rights occurred without the reality of legally-recognized marriages.

This presentation explores some aesthetic transformations of this fantasy in light of “Proposition 8,” the constitutional amendment passed in California earlier this month to repeal marriage rights.

This amendment is the first American campaign to repeal same-sex marriage rights in a jurisdiction that has legally-recognized same-sex marriages. What political and cultural differences have these rights/rites made in attempts to repulse equal rights to marriage, and what can this tell us about the progressive case for sexual citizenship?

Sponsored by:
The UHM/EWC International Cultural Studies Program

Telephone: 808-944-7593
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Event Sponsor
International Cultural Studies, Manoa Campus

More Information
Program Manager: Patty Harris, 808-944-7593, culture@hawaii.edu, http://www2.hawaii.edu/~culture/

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