Abolish THIS! Queer and Trans* Voices of Abolition

Abolitionist and anti-assimilationist ways of living ground contemporary queer studies as well as trans*, queer, and transqueer lenses on art and visual culture. These lifeways and ideas also face ongoing criminalization in the U.S. and abroad. In April 2023, as I was drafting this call for proposals, I received a call from a museum in Florida asking me to self-censor the description of my work - which included phrases such as "gender abolition and liberation," "anti-assimilationist communal spaces," and a "queer history of displacement" - or cancel my upcoming visit. Recent U.S. legislation especially threatens queer and trans* scholarship, obstructing our responsibility to educate students and disseminate ideas necessary in the march towards liberation. How do we, as scholars and artists with institutional access and the privilege of traveling in order to commune in thought, ensure that our theories and aesthetics yield action and material solidarity with those most excluded, who inspire our radical hopes?

We encourage submissions that articulate theories of abolition in queer and trans art history, engage artistic practices of reparation and future-building, and that foreground the liberatory possibilities embodied in queerness, transness, and transqueerness. Topics might include but are not limited to:

• Queer art and abolitionist politics in challenge to the prison industrial complex
• Narratives of queer artist-activists standing against hegemonic violence and surveillance
• Queer and trans resilience in the face of usury, trafficking, and forced labor
• Gender and sexual politics on the contemporary reservation