Queer & Trans Negativity Symposium

The Jackman Humanities Institute Working Group on Queer & Trans Negativity is pleased to announce the Queer & Trans Negativity Symposium, a two-day symposium that will take place at Innis College and the Jackman Humanities Building on April 30th-May 1st, 2026.

Professor Damon R. Young (French and Film & Media, UC Berkeley) will give our keynote address, which is entitled "Queer Cinema and the Nothing," on April 30th in Innis Town Hall, while a day of panels is slated for May 1st in the Jackman Humanities Building. Join us for generative discussions on queer and trans studies' long preoccupation with negativity, its potentialities and limitations, how negativity (and its refutation) impact our understanding of queer and trans art, cinema, and literature, and what, if queer and trans studies tend towards negativity, matters at the end of it all.

This is a free public event

Symposium Schedule

Thursday, April 30th

Innis College (2 Sussex Ave)

2:00 - 3:00PM
REGISTRATION
Innis College Lobby

3:00 - 5:00PM
KEYNOTE ADDRESS - DAMON R. YOUNG (UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY)
"QUEER CINEMA AND THE NOTHING"
Innis Town Hall

5:00 - 6:00PM
RECEPTION
Innis College, 2nd Floor Lounge

Friday, May 1st

Jackman Humanities Building (170 St. Georget St.)

10:00 - 10:10AM
BREAKFAST
Jackman Humanities Building, Room 100

10:10 - 11:55AM
PANEL 1: THE ANTISOCIAL AND THE POPULAR
Jackman Humanities Building, Room 100
Chair: Tamar Hanstke (University of Toronto)

• Roshaya Rodness (University of Toronto) “The Wall and the Cat: Going Rigid, Getting Hard, and Terminator 2”
• Sam Reimer (University of Toronto) “George Michael’s Absent Behind”
• Arlo Gross (Concordia University) “Killing the Child: horror’s queer little monsters”
• Kanika Lawton (University of Toronto) “Contesting (Ur)texts: Heteropessimism, Homo-optimism, and Couples Therapy”

11:55AM - 1:25PM
PANEL 2: FORMING VIOLENCE
Jackman Humanities Building, Room 100
Chair: Petra Totten (University of Toronto)

• Kit Haehnel (McGill University) “Trans Dread, on the violent impulse and failed/impossible transitions”
• Rebecca Bears Fonte (Concordia University) “Do Transfemmes Dream of Algorithmic Creep?: AI, the Double-Bind, and Trans-cynicism in the Age of Hopeless Aspiration”
• Joshua Falek (Duke University) “Transition, or Castration”

1:25 - 2:25PM
LUNCH

2:25 - 3:55PM
PANEL 3: ETHICS THROUGH AESTHETICS
Jackman Humanities Building, Room 100
Chair: Benjamin Beauchemin (University of Toronto)

• Alexandre Onézime Raymond Boucher (McGill University) “Erasing Blackness in the Shadows of White Marble”
• Colin Buist (University of Toronto) “Some Meth Gym Queen & White Trash Sexy Boys”
• Avneet Sharma (University of Toronto) “The Erotic Luminosity of Wakefield Poole’s Bijou”

3:55 - 5:25PM
PANEL 4: LOCATING NEGATIVITY
Jackman Humanities Building, Room 100
Chair: Aaisha Salman (University of Toronto)

• Aaditya Aggarwal (University of Toronto) “Queer Tableaux in Gangubai Kathiawadi”
• Saffron Maeve Frodyma (York University) “YES, THIS IS A LANDMARK! An Affective Archive of Variety Photoplays”
• Jon Petrychyn (University of Regina) “Solidarity and Separatism”

6:00PM
AFTER-PARTY HARBORD HOUSE (124 Harbord St.)

Symposium Team

ORGANIZERS: KANIKA LAWTON, AVNEET SHARMA

FACULTY LEAD: BLISS CUA LIM

PANEL CHAIRS: BENJAMIN BEAUCHEMIN, TAMAR HANSTKE, AAISHA SALMAN, PETRA TOTTEN ADJUDICATORS: YVES CHANG, JAKOB HENSELMANS, CASSANDRA LUCA, MAANDEEQ MOHAMED