A Coalition of Queer Classicists and Allies
Queerness Beyond Identity
LCC Panel, 2026 Annual Meeting of the SCS, San Francisco
Queer studies within Classics finds itself increasingly mired in debates about the precise gender and sexual identities of elite individuals from the historical record, such as Elagabalus and Sappho, as well as literary/mythological personae, such as Iphis and Caeneus. Sebastian Matzner (2022) has written that the queerness of the ancient world “has two dimensions”: first, those figures/practices which appear queer within the rubric of Greco-Roman gender and sexual norms, and second, aspects of antiquity which only become queer in their later reception(s). Recent scholarship of both stripes places a high premium on celebrating the gender and sexual diversity of the ancient world, unwittingly reinscribing the historical violences that accompany “outing” queers while also idealizing these subjects as “good” or “bad” exemplars of entire minoritized groups (Amin 2017). Meanwhile, in queer and trans studies, scholars and theorists have long demonstrated the limits of positivistic, identitarian, and taxonomical analyses, from Cathy J. Cohen to Jules Gill-Peterson to Robyn Wiegman. What new histories and theories of queerness come into view once we look beyond the desire for representation? Can we reimagine Queer Classics as the use of queer and trans scholarly methods that centers the “urgency and politics” of these methods’ origins, and foregoes the “relative safety” of depoliticized identification with queer figures from the past (Kotrosits 2023)?
This panel invites methodological interventions, especially in conversation with queer and trans studies, to the treatment of content claimed or marginalized by Classics. To that end, we welcome proposals that theorize queerness beyond gender and sexual identity using literary, historical, comparative, reception-based, and/or artistic approaches, including performance, readings, and collaborative work. Proposals might also:
- employ anti-identitarian concepts such as disidentification (Muñoz 2009), ungendering, gender abolition (Bey 2022), and queer assemblages (Puar 2007);
- excavate how queerness is co-constituted by race, labor, disability/debility, and indigeneity in antiquity and modernity;
- mobilize queer imaginaries that decenter Greco-Roman and/or canonical points of reference (e.g. Nguyen 2021, 2023);
- interrogate what desires attend the centrality of identity-based research within Classics and academia, and question gender as an “aspirational political program” (Kotrosits 2023);
- treat antiquity as just one situated node within larger queer archives (Haselswerdt 2023);
- counter vectors of oppression without resorting to positivistic idealizations of the ancient past or recriminations of classicism’s colonial epistemic project, in the spirit of a Critical Ancient World Studies (CAWS 2023);
- artistically or creatively respond to/with the ancient world or its scholarship (e.g. Chin 2020).
To join us in this project, please send abstracts that follow the guidelines for individual abstracts (see the SCS Guidelines for Authors of Abstracts in SCS format should be submitted by email to Tom Sapsford at sapsford@bc.edu by March 1, 2025. Any questions about proposals or the panel can be directed to Erin Lam (erinlam@ucsb.edu) and Nicolette D’Angelo (ncdangelo@g.ucla.edu).
Please ensure that the abstracts are anonymous. The organizers will review all submissions anonymously, and their decision will be communicated to the authors of abstracts by April 1, 2025, with enough time that those whose abstracts are not chosen can participate in the individual abstract submission process for the upcoming SCS meeting.