Categorical designation of the Caribbean as "superlatively homophobic” blinds us to the modes of livelihood that reside within the region and erases the presence of queer citizens. This lecture examines Kareem J. Mortimer’s Children of God (2011) alongside Patricia Powell’s A Small Gathering of Bones for the ways in which the filmmaker and author deploy space to craft notions of un/belonging, ownership, and social ambivalence with regard to sexual expression by sexual minorities in the Caribbean. This lecture also examines how local Caribbean activists create queer cartographies in response to state-sanctioned violence.

Michelle Rowley's research interests address issues of gender and development, the politics of welfare, as well as state responses to questions of Caribbean women's reproductive health and well being and rights for sexual minorities. Her publications include "When the Post-Colonial State Bureaucratizes Gender: Charting Trinidadian Women's Centrality within the Margins," "Where the Streets Have No Name: Getting Development Out of the (RED)," "Rethinking Interdisciplinarity: Meditations on the Sacred Possibilities of an Erotic Feminist Pedagogy," and "Whose Time Is It?: Gender and Humanism in Contemporary Caribbean Feminist Advocacy." Her book is entitled Feminist Advocacy and Gender Equity in the Anglophone Caribbean: Envisioning a Politics of Coalition (Routledge, 2011).

This lecture is part of IRWG's Transitions and Ruptures series and is cosponsored by Afroamerican and African Studies.