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Missing Each Other: Queer Tales of Love, Longing, and Loss
March 29, 2023 @ 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
FreeVisiting Scholar in LGBTQ+ Studies Dr. Tony Adams (he/they), is professor of Communication at Bradley University. He uses ethnography and autoethnography to study the everyday interactions that make up our lives, enact our identities, and create LGBTQ+ experiences.
Dr. Adams’ presentation:
There are many popular sayings about the consequentiality of everyday relational affairs. There’s the quote attributed to Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” And the aphorism credited to Aesop: “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” There are those inspirational memes: “Some stranger somewhere remembers you because you were kind to them,” “Someone heard a song that reminded them of you,” and “You knew the other for only a short time but they changed your life for the better.” And there’s the “butterfly effect,” the concept that suggests even the slightest act can motivate infinite iterative and compounding acts.
In this lecture, Dr. Tony Adams will demonstrate the consequentiality of our everyday relational affairs. He will focus specifically on mundane queer encounters—moments of meeting that reference same-gender attraction and LGBQ+ identities and/or challenge heteronormative expectations about when, where, how, and with whom intimacy can occur. Throughout, he will show how we can, knowingly and unknowingly, change someone with our words and deeds. He pays homage to social interactions that, at the time they occurred, may have felt trivial and unremarkable yet now, upon reflection, feel formative and momentous. In so doing, he illustrates the potential iterative and compounding impact of what we say and don’t say, do and don’t do.
Event includes Q&A and a reception (with tea and snacks!).