Hi, [redacted]! Sorry, I spent my 1 bad word of the semester in last week’s newsletter, and Ellie won’t [redacted]-ing increase my allowance. Anyways, GMM this Friday!!
This Week
Join us this Friday (September 8) for our second general member meeting (GMM), from 5-6 pm at Douglass 407! We’ll welcome our O4UD conference attendees, announce oSTEM conference details, and share an upcoming HPO collab event. Bring a friend!
Coming Up
Updates
- Addressing Camera Use In oSTEM Spaces
At oSTEM, we proactively work towards making our event spaces respectful, accessible, and comfortable. We understand that everyone’s situation is different and being ‘Out’ in STEM looks different for each of us.
We ask that you please refrain from taking pictures/videos in oSTEM spaces (GMMs, speaker events, study hours, etc.) unless given explicit permission both by E-Board and relevant members/guests. If we need to take pictures (ie. publicity) or stream a meeting (ie. zoom guest), we will let everyone know beforehand as usual! If you have any questions/concerns about this policy feel free to reach out to us at any time! <3
oSTEM
- oSTEM Conference: Interest Form due September 27, 2023
With the 2023 oSTEM Conference around the corner, we are working hard in the background to work out travel logistics/finances to ensure strong UR representation for our first ever national conference! The conference this year will be in Anaheim, CA from November 9-12. We will go over all conference details at our GMM this Friday! If you cannot attend this week’s GMM but would like to go, contact us ASAP.
You can also submit your research through their Call for Posters to showcase at the conference, due September 30, 2023. Don’t forget to let us know that you submitted a poster in the Interest Form above!
- Website
Browse through our CCC website to take advantage of our compiled Resources & Opportunities (scholarships, conferences, etc.), read more about our iconic E-Board, and find other general oSTEM links. The website is regularly updated, if you spot any issues or know of an R&O we haven’t included, our Feedback Form is always open!
University
- outGRADS Welcome Back Event: September 22, 2023
Our university’s queer graduate student organization, outGRADS is holding its first gathering of the semester this Friday (September 22) from 12 - 2:30 pm at the Humanities Center Lounge (in Rush Rhees Library). They will have people helping you find the lounge if you need help, but if you have any questions feel free to contact us or outGRADS’s co-president (and our bestie) Zee.
Outside
- RISE Germany Positions: Applications due November 30, 2023
The German Academic Exchange Service’s (DAAD, in German the acronym makes sense) RISE (Research Internships in Science and Engineering) internships give STEM undergraduates research/mentorship opportunities in Germany and stipends to cover living expenses. Read more about the RISE Germany program here and the worldwide program here. Our friends at the Fellowships Office are also great resources for application tips and guidance!
Cruising Utopia: Materializing Queer Dreams
“The aesthetic, especially the queer aesthetic, frequently contains blueprints and schemata of a forward-dawning futurity. Both the ornamental and the quotidian can contain a map of the utopia that is queerness. Turning to the aesthetic in the case of queerness is nothing like an escape from the social realm, insofar as queer aesthetics map future social relations. Queerness is also a performative because it is not simply a being but a doing for and toward the future. Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world.”
- José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia
Author and queer theorist, José Esteban Muñoz likens queerness to ideality in Cruising Utopia, ascribing the future as queer domain. Muñoz’s framing of queer escapism from reality’s hostility to our existence is referenced by Jack Halberstam’s notion of ‘queer failure’ (re: NL 6). While Muñoz describes the utopian new realities that queer thought conjures, Halberstam frames the queer acts of materializing it from the view of the present’s cishet establishment.
Cultural theorist, and author, Lauren Berlant, problematizes these self-defined queer ideals and the drive toward them in her book, Cruel Optimism (re: NL 15, yeah I’m finally using our extensive past newsletters). In linking neoliberal influences to these self-defined goals, Berlant also questions the utility of ‘optimism’ and highlights its shortcomings. While Muñoz and Halberstam acknowledge shortcomings through pragmatic eyes, they admittedly don’t really explore the potential harm disidentification from reality has for progress.
Still, I think Muñoz’s construct of a queer utopia helps in understanding that today is not normal. His “temporal maneuvers” referencing successful queer failures and mapping of queerness in the future as disruptions to the “straight [present] times” warn against political conformity and assimilation. Muñoz’s utopia can be difficult to visualize with significance political and social prominence, modern queer spaces can serve as utopic bubbles. The art of drag (yeah, I’ll always find a way to bring it back to drag) presently celebrates the queer failure of gendered expression and embodies a queer utopia post-cis/heteronormativity.
