Decentring queer cinema: critical contributions to the analytics of sexual differences in contemporary cinema

• Grant number: 14/26060-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: May 01, 2015
• End date: October 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Paulo Roberto Arruda de Menezes
• Grantee: Cristian Carla Bernava
• Supervisor: Michael McIntyre
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: DePaul University, United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 12/12644-7 - Projecting Gender: sexualities in contemporary cinema, BP.DR

Abstract

This Proposal for Research Internship Abroad (BEPE) is delineated as part of my doctorate research entitled Projecting Gender: sexualities in contemporary cinema, in which I investigate how cinemas from various parts of the world have challenged, since the mid-1990s, hegemonic cinematographic constructions of sexual differences and gender, either straight, gay or transgender. Through the analysis of a series of movies produced in the period, this research aims to comprehend the discursive boundaries present in the current cinematographic construction of sexual differences and what kind of relations and practices they problematize or legitimate. In this sense, the cinematographic production of the period is understood as a part of broader set of relations in which values and meanings are being socially negotiated. The influence of the emergence of New Queer Cinema - as a result of the appropriation of cinema by gay movements in the AIDS era - and the growth of Lesbian and Gay Film Festivals during the early 1990s are important elements to be considered in the shaping of a possible new regime of visibility of sexual differences in the following decades, especially in relation to heteronormativity. It is exactly this articulation of elements that constitutes the main topic to be researched during the proposed internship. The Department of International Studies at the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences of DePaul University was chosen to host the internship due to its vibrant faculty and interdisciplinary investigations. Thus, this period of research abroad is seen as an opportunity to deepen into critical social theory and interdisciplinary methods, as well as Queer Cinema criticism, significantly contributing to the analytical conclusions of the ongoing doctorate research. (AU)