CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center will host a Queer-Class Relations conference April 17-18, 2026.
Commemorating the 40th anniversary of CLAGS’ founding in 1986 and its groundbreaking Homo/Economics conference in 1994, this conference marks a pivotal moment for thinking about queer-class relations. Working in the tradition of thinkers such as Cathy Cohen, Lee Badgett, and Eli Clare–and in memory of our dear friends Urvashi Vaid, Jeffrey Escoffier, and Amber Hollibaugh–the conference invites participants to explore the connections between queer lives and the class experiences that are also shaped by race, caste, disability, and gender. Premised on the idea that queer and class are inevitably intertwined, the conference asks what the construction “queer-class” illuminates, obfuscates, disrupts, and structures. How can we understand erotic, economic, personal, and social relations in ways that help us build queer-class solidarities, for example within university-based queer and trans studies, across activist sites in the Global South, or amidst the wreckage of the current U.S. political landscape?
Queer-Class Relations Conference host: CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies
Cohosts:
- University of Pennsylvania: Department of English, The Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, The Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies, and the Gender and Sexuality working group (Gen/Sex)
- Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto
Date: April 17-18, 2026
Location: Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue, NY, NY 10016
Contact: [email protected]
