RESCHEDULED ORIENTations. "Bottomhood Is Powerful"

This lecture is part of the Critical Ethnic and Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop: ORIENTations

The Critical Ethnic and Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop enthusiastically invites you to participate in ORIENTations, a semester long series of speakers on the cutting edge in feminist and queer of color scholarship. We have invited three speakers, prominent new and vital voices in Asian American Studies, to share their work and lead us in a collaborative discussion on the state of feminist/queer of color inquiry in Ethnic Studies.  

Hoang Tan Nguyen is a visual artist and scholar who teaches at Bryn Mawr College. His recent book, A View from the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Representation (Duke 2014), engages longstanding debates in queer Asian American masculinities examining the depiction of "bottomhood" in Hollywood cinema, gay pornography, and documentary. 

His presentation, Bottomhood Is Powerful, examines the ways that anal erotics and bottom positioning refract the meanings of race, gender, sexuality, and nationality in Asian/American visual culture. He argues that "bottomhood" simultaneously enables and constrains Asian American men in moving-image media. Conceived as a sexual position, a social alliance, and an aesthetic form, bottomhood affirms a politics that embraces risk, receptivity, and vulnerability. Gay male video pornography and sex cruising websites constitute case studies. The talk will be supplemented by a short video screening.