Lecture, Oh Right, Policing Femininity, and other Queer Matters in Figure Skating.

Oh, Right, Policing Femininity, and other Queer Matters in Figure Skating

Annual Lesbian and Gay lecture, in conjunction with The History Project

Erica Rand

Friday, October 9, 2009, 6:00 p.m.

When Erica Rand competed in figure skating at the 2006 Gay Games in Chicago,
she expected to find a queerer rink culture—in terms of sex and gender—than the one
she was coming to know as an adult figure skater living in Portland, Maine. In some ways
she did. Where else would you find “same-sex” pairs interpreting Brokeback Mountain, a
punk butch/femme romance on skates, or a male skater using an instrumental version of
“I Feel Pretty” for an audience ready to jump in where the lyrics would have announced
feeling “pretty and witty and gay”? Yet she was also struck by how much in the scene did
look familiar—and, conversely, about the complicated relations to “straight” of gender
and sexuality in normative figure skating. In her lecture, Rand will address the weird mix
of convention and regulation, intention and side effect, racialization and class-marking
that contributes to what’s queer and what’s straight about figure skating among people of
diverse ages who take their toe picks and glitter seriously.

Erica Rand is a professor of Art and Visual Culture and of Women and Gender Studies at
Bates College. Her writings include Barbie’s Queer Accessories and The Ellis Island Snow
Globe. She is currently working on a book-length project called Red Nails Black Skates,
a study concerning the politics of pleasure grounded in her participant-observation work
in recreational figure skating.

To Reserve: There is no fee for this event. Reservations are required but will not
be accepted until September 25. Please call the Athenæum’s events reservation
line, 617-720-7600.