Dissent Nearby: Diasporic & LGBTQ+ Resistance

In frantically trying to gain Republican support to pass a funding bill, Donald Trump asserted on Truth Social “We have to remain UNITED – NO DISSENT...VERY IMPORTANT...” (8 March 2025). As artists and activists have demonstrated for years, solidarity building and modes of dissent, however, often go hand-in-hand. This panel subsequently spotlights entwined histories of U.S.-based immigrant and LGBTQ+ communities as part of ongoing efforts to address issues of xenophobia, racism, homophobia, and transphobia using an intersectional and transnational feminist lens. Throughout the last century, American immigration acts have routinely included language of “sexual deviation” and anti-HIV-positive rhetoric in impermissibility rubrics. While, today, we are seeing immigrants be deported to Guantanamo Bay alongside federally funded programs removing “T” and “Q” from materials using an LGBTQ+ acronym, the relationships between U.S. legislation, diasporic displacement, and gender and sexual identities are arguably under-discussed in tandem. By closing this gap, the panel fosters both timely critical conversations and steps toward solidarity building, collective organizing, and mutual aid. Together, panelists voice dissent inside and outside of gallery walls.

Papers from a range of professionals – historians, theorists, curators, artists, and community organizers – are invited to collaboratively investigate the intersections of diasporic and LGBTQ+ resistance. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Anti-imperial queer feminist methodologies
• Strategies for navigating tensions between arts activism and institutional strictures
• Critical approaches to issues of displacement and/or archival erasure/exclusion in art history
• Solidarity building and forms of mutual aid inside and outside of the university and museum