The 20/21st Century Colloquium: Alex Parsons, “The Numinous and the Ordinary: Derek Jarman’s ‘Chroma’ and Maggie Nelson’s ‘Bluets’ ”

Event time: 
Thursday, September 21, 2017 - 4:00pm to 6:00pm
Location: 
Linsly-Chittenden Hall (LC ), 319 See map
63 High Street
New Haven, CT 06511

‘Chroma’ and ‘Bluets’ are interdisciplinary autobiographical texts that explore the limits of articulacy and create new queer and feminist genealogies of meaning. This talk argues that these experimental projects communicate embodied experiences including the effects of loss and AIDS-related illnesses by interrogating our understandings of perception and color.

Alexandra Parsons is currently a Yale-UCL Exchange Scholar, finalising her Ph.D. on queer filmmaker, artist, activist and writer Derek Jarman. She is preparing the first full-length study of his writing, incorporating analyses of his strategic self-representations across media. She is interested in queer literary and visual cultures, contemporary life-writing, and political activism in print. Her work has been published in Shakespeare Bulletin (Johns Hopkins University Press) and is forthcoming in a/b: Auto/Biography studies (Routledge). She is currently preparing a chapter on contemporary queer literature for The Routledge Companion to Twenty-First Century Literary Fiction. She teaches at Queen Mary, University of London, and at University College London.

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