Queer Sites in Global Contexts Technologies, Spaces, and Otherness

Queer Sites in Global Contexts showcases a variety of cross-cultural perspectives that foreground the physical and online experiences of LGBTQ+ people living in the Caribbean, South and North America, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. The individual chapters—a collection of research-based texts by scholars around the world—provide twelve compelling case studies: queer sites that include buildings, digital networks, natural landscapes, urban spaces, and non-normative bodies. By prioritizing divergent histories and practices of queer life in geographies that are often othered by dominant queer studies in the West—female sex workers, people of color, indigenous populations, Latinx communities, trans identities, migrants—the book constructs thoroughly situated, nuanced discussions on queerness through a variety of research methods. The book presents tangible examples of empirical research and practice-based work in the fields of queer and gender studies; geography, architectural, and urban theory; and media and digital culture. Responding to the critical absence surrounding experiences of non-White queer folk in Western academia, Queer Sites in Global Contexts acts as a timely resource for scholars, activists, and thinkers interested in queer placemaking practices—both spatial and digital—of diverse cultures.

Introduction Regner Ramos and Sharif Mowlabocus 1. San Juan Queer: Mobile Apps, Urban Spaces, and LGBTQ Identities Regner Ramos 2. A Kindr Grindr: Moderating Race(ism) in Techno-Spaces of Desire Sharif Mowlabocus 3. Learning to Become an Extremophile: Trans Symbiosis and Survival in Berlin Ged Ribas-Goody 4. Fluid Territories: Intersectional Subjectivities Through Hereditary and Digital Spaces Mabia Camargo and Eduardo Martins 5. Queer Infrastructures: LGBTQ+ Networks and Urban Governance in Global London Ben Campkin 6. Digital Dogma: Relating the Manifestations of Religion Online to the Practices and Experiences of Arab MSMs Khaliden Alsaleh 7. The Carceral Feminism of SESTA-FOSTA: Reproducing Spaces of Exclusion from IRL to URL Jody Liu 8. Queering The Map: On Designing Digital Queer Space Lucas LaRochelle 9. Transformismo: A Spatial, Cultural, and Racial Intervention in Chicago’s Queer and Latinx Communities Liliana Macias 10. Communicating ‘Race’ in A Digitized Gay China Tianyang Oscar Zhou 11. The Kenwood Ladies’ Bathing Pond: Instrumentalizing Spatial Imaginaries in the ‘Trans Debate’ in Britain Lo Marshall 12. Hear, Here: Preserving and Sharing the History of Queer Stories in La Crosse, Wisconsin Ariel Beaujot and Víctor M. Macías-González

Regner Ramos is Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Puerto Rico. His research on the relationship between queerness and space is informed by experimental research methods, shifting between model-making, drawing, and performative writing. He is the Editor-in-Chief of informa journal and the architecture Editor at Glass magazine, and Co-Director of Wet Hard Agency. His current research project, “Cürtopia: Queer Maps for Puerto Rico”, is funded by FIPI. Sharif Mowlabocus is Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University. He is the author of Gaydar Culture (2010) and his forthcoming book, Interrogating Homonormativity, explores the British gay male culture in the ‘post-equalities’ era.