Lavender Languages Institute

Archie Crowley (University of South Carolina) 

What do you need to know about language and linguistics to study gender and sexuality? This course will provide an introduction to linguistics and language studies to prepare students to engage with research within Queer and Trans Linguistics and Lavender Language frameworks. We will address key concepts in phonetics, morphology and syntax, discourse analysis, and semiotics through research on language, gender, and sexuality.

Jeremy Calder (University of Colorado, Boulder)

Semiotics is the study of signs, how they are used, and how they are interpreted. What is a sign, what are the components of a sign, and how do people use signs in social, cultural, and linguistic practice? This course will introduce key topics and concepts in the study of semiotic theory (e.g., indexicality, iconicity, embodiment, agency) and how they tie into the articulation of gender identity, especially for queer and trans subjects. How do queer and trans people use language and embodied signs to communicate things about their identities, when many of these signs have been associated with gendered meanings in a cisnormative way? In other words, how can gender non-normative individuals signal their identity in a legible way despite cisnormative discourses that threaten to position them as illegible?

Lucy Jones (University of Nottingham)

Ethnography allows the researcher to gain an invaluable ‘insider’ perspective on speaker behaviours, which allows them to better understand the meaning of their participants’ shared practices. This approach is employed often and to great effect in studies of language, gender and sexuality, yet there are many ethical and practical issues to consider when working in queer contexts. This course provides a hands-on introduction to this methodology and the theoretical concepts underpinning it, and considers the implications of doing ethnography with queer subjects.

Ashvin Kini (College of the Holy Cross)

This course examines the role of language and literature in the making of colonial, postcolonial and decolonial racial and sexual politics. We will read literature and theory from South Asia, Africa and the Americas to interrogate queerness as a fraught and contested site through which colonized peoples have both critiqued imperial power relations and imagined alternatives to heteropatriarchal nationalisms.

Dr. Nikki Lane

In this seminar, we will engage with a variety of African American language practices using Black queer theoretical interventions as our frame for thinking about their relationships to the politics of race, gender, sexuality, and class. Taking a "Quare Linguistic Approach", we will explore the ways that African American language practices often bend, stretch, and flip Standard English to create new kinds of meaning within a variety of contexts of situated language use. Most importantly, we will consider how Black queer subjects situate themselves within an overlapping set of hostile ideologies, deploying multiple strategies rooted firmly within an already queer AAE. Texts that we examine in the course will be drawn directly from contemporary American Popular Culture.

William Leap (Florida Atlantic University)

What does language history look like if history is not described as a chronology, a sequenced trajectory, a linear movement toward some triumphant goal? Let’s look at some data sets from “before”, and consider what evidence of history those data provide. Whose history? History of what? Whose language use is included? Deleted? How would language users describe this “history”? How do these issues help build safer places for queer and trans people and expose homophobic themes in policy and politics?

David Peterson (University of Nebraska, Omaha)

This seminar offers participants the opportunity to explore the representations of gender-sexual normativity that buttress various types of white nationalist discourse, including ethno-statist (e.g, neo-fascism, Anglo-Saxonism, etc.), religious (e.g., Christian statism), and combinations of these both historical and in the present moment. While the focus will primarily be on US-based discourses, participants are invited to consider other relevant nationalist contexts. Particular attention will be paid to practice analysis using Critical Discourse Analysis and Systemic-Functional Linguistics to unpack nationalist texts and their anti-LGBTQ+ messages.

Maria Amelia Viteri (University of Maryland)

This course examines some of the eco-systems that support colonial legacies. These legacies inform distorted understandings around gender, sexuality, and ethnicity, and negatively impact people’s lives. Through different bodies of texts, we will closely examine the fabric underlying translation, land, and border crossing as nonlinear processes, as well as the fractures and architectures of heteronormativity.

Adrian Ray Avalani - The University of Chicago (2021)

Adrienne Percival - Compass Community Center (2021)

Aiden Loughlin - University of Victoria (2019)

Aine McAlinden - Georgetown University (2021)

Aisha Ramazanova - Higher School of Economics (2022)  

Alex Bandong - Appalachian State University (2021)

Allen Michaela - University of St. Thomas (2021)

Andrea Bryant - Reed College (2021)

André Bernard - Hong Kong Baptist University (2022)

Archie Crowley - University of South Carolina (2018, 2019, 2021, 2022)

Artemis López Fuentes - Universidade de Vigo (2021)

Ashley Thornton - University of Brighton (2021)

Ayden Loughlin - University of Victoria (2021)

Brandon William Epstein - Bar-Ilan University (2022)

Brooke English - Rice University (2018)

Carlos Vazquez - State University of New York, Stony Brook (2019)

Chen Li-Chi - Faculty of Linguistics, Casimir the Great University (2021)

Claudia Holguin Mendoza (2021)

Corey Tatz - Memorial University of Newfoundland (2021)

Corey Thorne - Memorial University of Newfoundland (2018)

Damara Martin - Florida Atlantic University (2019)

Darren Brockes - The University of Chicago (2021)

Darrin Miller - University of North Texas (2018)

Derek Vaughn - Florida Atlantic University (2018)

Diana Davidson - University of Washington (2022)

Elizabeth Johnstone - New York University (2021)

Emerson Barrett - Oregon State University (2022)

Ernesto Cuba - City University of New York, The Graduate Center (2018)

Farieda Ilhami Zulaikha - Universitas Perjuangan Tasikmalaya (2021)

Guadalupe Ortega - Dartmouth College (2022)

Hanna Bruns - University of Bonn (2021)

Hannah Bingham Brunner - Oklahoma State University (2021, 2022)

Hannah Sawall - University of Duisburg-Essen (2022)

Hazel Marshall - Ucniveristy of California, Santa Barbara (2018)

Ian Funk - The George Washington University (2021)

J. Inscoe - University of Maryland Baltimore County (2021)

Jade Levandofsky - American University (2018)

Jamison Wezelis - SUNY, University at Buffalo (2021)

Jason D'Angelo - Georgetown University (2018, 2019)

Jennifer Bosco - University of San Fransisco (2022)

Jhonatan Henao-Muñoz - University of Arizona (2021)

Jimmy Lizama - Researcher at Rising Graduate Student (2021)

Joey Andrew Lucido Santos - Chulalongkorn University (2021)

Jordan Tudisco - University of California, Santa Barbara (2018, 2021)

Joseph Radice - University of Florida (2019)

Julissa Mansilla Bjalme - Florida Atlantic University (2019, 2021)

Kate Pashby - Independent (2021)

Kevin Rivera-Morales - University of Victoria (2019)

Lara Boyero Agudo -  University of Oregon (2021)

Laura Horst - California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo (2018, 2019)

Lex Konnelly - University of Toronto (2018, 2019, 2021, 2022)

Leyla Savloff - University of Washington, Seattle (2018)

Makayla Qionn - University of St. Thomas (2022)

Matias Sanhueza - University of Chile (2021)

Maximilliano Campana - independent scholar (2019)

Max Reuvers - University of Groningen (2022)

Melissa Curry - Rhode Island College (2018)

Michael Barnes - University of Birmingham (2021)

Michelle Marzullo - California Institute of Integral Studies (2018)

Mie Hiramoto - National University of Singapore (2019)

Mira Cantrick - California Institute of Integral Studies (2021)

Montreal Benesch - Reed College (2021, 2022)

Natascha Rohde - Aston University Birmingham, U.K. (2021)

Orion Wesson - University of Oregon (2021)

Patrick Sonnenberg - University of Tennessee, Knoxville (2018)

Peter D'Ettore - Broward College (2021)

Peyton Sibert - Florida Atlantic University (2022) 

Ray Johns (2022)

Rebecca  Andre - Palm Beach County Now (2021)

Remington LeBeau (2022)

Robin Hershkowitz - Bowling Green State University (2021)

Robin Turner - University of Illinois (2021)

Sahin Acikgoz - University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2018)

Simon Charles Thériault - University of Montreal (2019)

Sydney Jameson-Blowers - University of Buffalo (2021)

Tahtzee Nico - University of Washington (2021)

Vagrant Gautam - Saarland University (2022)

Victoria Portela-Rosado - University of Victoria (2019)

Will Alvarez Navarrete - University of British Columbia (2021)