[Mitai-announce] Global Queer Human Rights Series

[Ian Lekus]

(Please feel free to forward as appropriate)



The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy's

Human Rights and Social Movements Program


is proud to present its SPRING 2011 GLOBAL QUEER SERIES


a 5-part series of public discussions on LGBTQ human rights in the global
arena


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PART ONE:  LGBTQ HUMAN RIGHTS IN PALESTINE


Hosted by


Timothy Patrick McCarthy and Ian Lekus, Co-Conveners


Featuring


Abeer Mansour, Aswat


Haneen Maikey, Al-Qaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society


Moderated by


Afsaneh Najmabadi, Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History and of Studies
on

Women, Gender, and Sexuality


6:30-8pm


Tuesday, February 8th, 2011


Harvard Kennedy School


Starr Auditorium, 4th floor, Belfer Building

(corner of JFK and Elliot Streets)


BIOS:


Abeer Mansour is a feminist, Palestinian, queer activist who is dedicated to

promoting the inclusion of Palestinian queer women in Palestinian society.

In 2008, Abeer joined the staff of Aswat, an organization for Palestinian

gay women, as a resource development and networking coordinator. She

represents Aswat at local and global events to explain the multiple forms of

oppression Palestinian queer women face: as a national indigenous minority

living inside Israel, struggling for equal human and civil rights; as women

battling for equality with men in conservative and patriarchal Palestinian

society; and finally as queer women living in a hetero-normative culture

which is often extremely homophobic, fighting discrimination and

marginalization. Abeer networks with partner feminist and human rights

organizations to promote the inclusion of the queer agenda in their

activism.


Haneen Maikey, a 32-year-old Palestinian queer activist, lives and works in

Jerusalem.  Her involvement in queer Palestinian community began in late

2001, when she was the coordinator of the Palestinian Project at Jerusalem

Open House. During her years at JOH, Haneen learned and led a long term

process of self- and community-development (and discovery), moving from a

local, service-oriented project under the umbrella of a Jewish-Israeli

organization to a Palestinian, independent, grass roots, political LGBTQ

group working both inside Israel and the Palestinian occupied territories.

Since 2008, Haneen has been the director of Al-Qaws for Sexual & Gender

Diversity in Palestinian Society.


Afsaneh Najmabadi is the Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History and of

Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. Her last

book, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual

Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (University of California Press, 2005),

received the 2005 Joan Kelly Memorial Prize from the American Historical

Association. She is currently working on Sex in Change: Configurations of

Sexuality and Gender in Contemporary Iran, and on Genus of Sex: How Jins

Became Sex in Iran. Afsaneh and a team of Qajar historians received a NEH

grant to develop a comprehensive digital archive and website that will

preserve, link, and render accessible primary source materials related to

the social and cultural history of women's worlds during the reign of the

Qajar dynasty (1785 - 1925) in Iran.


**********************************


Future GLOBAL QUEER SERIES events:


Tuesday, March 1, Allison Dining Room, 5th Floor, Taubman Building, HKS:

LGBTQ HUMAN RIGHTS IN SLOVENIA AND THE BALKANS featuring Mitja Blazic,
freelance

journalist and activist for LGBT human rights and HIV/AIDS, and moderated by
Ian

Lekus, Lecturer on History and Literature, Harvard University.


Tuesday, March 29, Starr Auditorium, 4th Floor, Belfer Building, HKS:

LGBTQ HUMAN RIGHTS IN MEXICO AND EUROPE featuring Dr. Jorge Saavedra, Chief
of

Global Affairs for AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and moderated by Bradley S.

Epps, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of Studies on
Women,

Gender, and Sexuality, Harvard University.


Tuesday, April 5, Allison Dining Room, 5th Floor, Taubman Building, HKS:

LGBTQ HUMAN RIGHTS IN UGANDA featuring Valentine Kalende Nankanja, Ugandan
LGBTQ

activist, and moderated by Timothy Patrick McCarthy, Director, Human Rights
and

Social Movements Program, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard
Kennedy

School.


Tuesday, April 12, Allison Dining Room, 5th Floor, Taubman Building, HKS:

LGBTQ HUMAN RIGHTS IN IRAQ featuring Mike Luongo, adjunct professor, New
York

University, and freelance journalist, travel writer, and photographer, and

moderated by Ian Lekus, Lecturer on History and Literature, Harvard
University,

and Timothy Patrick McCarthy, Director, Human Rights and Social Movements

Program, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.