"Queer in Legal Sense: Brown Citizenship and Other Lawful Fictions" book talk at UIC

In this talk, José A. de la Garza Valenzuela (Assistant Professor in the Department of Latina/o Studies a the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) traces the legal and literary histories of the new legal grammars of U.S Citizenship in an introduction to his recently published book, Queer in a Legal Sense: Brown Citizenship and Other Lawful Fictions. Analyzing a legal corpus narrowly codifying sex and gender against a gay Chicanx literary tradition challenging the terms on which queer and Chicanx political movements sought what he terms “brown citizenship.” Dr. de la Garza Valenzuela interrogates the “lawful fictions” through which we have and continue to understand being a citizen at each other’s expense.

This program is part of the Gender and Sexuality Center’s “Queer and Trans Latine Liberation” Theme in honor of the UIC Latino Cultural Center’s 50th Anniversary.

Co-sponsored by the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts (CADA), Gender & Women’s Studies (GWS), Institute for the Humanities, Latin American & Latino Studies (LALS), Queer & Trans Studies Working Group, and the UIC Rafael Cintron Ortiz Latino Cultural Center.