The revolutionary prospect of socialism inspired homosexual emancipation and the growth of toleration toward same-sex relations in the first quarter of the twentieth century in many countries, including the UK, US, Hungary, and USSR. However, the development of LGBTQ+ rights within socialism was never linear and even.

The conference seeks to address those discrepancies and the reasoning behind them. It aims to discuss the LGBTQ+ experience and its political, social, and cultural implications under state socialism from a global perspective. What was the place of queerness under socialism? Was socialist ideology generally more responsive to queer people’s agenda and empathic towards them? How did legislation relate to same-sex activity change over time in socialist countries? How did the Cold War and geopolitical tensions between socialist and capitalist counties influence and inform sexual politics toward queer people and their perception? Why did some socialist countries, such as the Czech Republic, Hungary, and the GDR decriminalize homosexuality as early as the 1960s and the Polish People’s Republic never criminalize it? What strategies of networking and concealment did sexual and gender non-conformists adopt in the socialist countries where homosexuality was still illegal, such as Soviet Republics, China, and Cuba? What was the attitude towards gender and sexual dissidents among the left-leaning movements in capitalist countries? Why decriminalization of homosexuality and homosexual emancipation that followed it was subsequently cut off in some post-socialist countries such as Russia?

The main goal of the symposium is to reflect on the broad spectrum of topics related to the conjunction of queer and socialist ideology from a global and comparative perspective. The symposium aims at the broader public, including students, scholars, and activists.

The Undergraduate Model European Union is an annual event that gives students a chance to learn about the workings of the European Union through preparation for and participation in a hands-on two-day simulation of a meeting of the European Council. Model EU enhances students’ understanding of the issues and challenges facing the 27 member nations of the EU. Awards will be given to the most effective delegations and best individual position papers.

Join Dr. Eve Darian-Smith as she leads this teaching workshop for K-16 educators. The focus of this workshop will be on helping educators develop global studies into their curriculum by specifically thinking about incorporating issues around planetary warming as a theme (and its global intersectionality with racism, public health, biospecies extinction, and access to natural resources). The workshop will be hybrid in Posvar Hall and Zoom. Room location is to be determined.

Dr. Darian-Smith serves as the Chair of the Department of Global and International Studies and is a professor of Global Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She has published several award-winning books focused on global issues. Trained as a lawyer, historian and anthropologist, Dr. Darian-Smith is a critical interdisciplinary scholar interested in issues of postcolonialism, human rights, legal pluralism, and socio-legal theory. Her current work focuses on authoritarianism and crises of democracy. 

Organized under the auspices of The Journal of Asian Studies to help increase the range, breadth and quality of journal article manuscripts, the theme for this workshop is "Boundary Pushing." Significant new work in Asian Studies often runs counter to or across traditional categories of scholarly conversation. For this reason, work that pushes boundaries is often difficult to frame effectively for publication. The workshop is designed and conducted by the editors of JAS to help early career scholars prepare manuscripts for successful peer review. This roundtable session, open to the public, will include editors of the Journal of Asian Studies and editors from other well-established journals in related fields for a vibrant discussion on boundary-pushing writing and scholarship in Asian Studies. To register please click here.