Queer-Class Relations Conference
April 17-18, 2026
CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York City
CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center will host a Queer-Class Relations conference April 17-18, 2026. Proposals are due by September 1, 2025. Successful applicants will be required to register by November 15, 2025.
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?
Keynote speakers: Anne Balay and Anjali Arondekar
Dr. Anne Balay is a labor historian and an organizer with Service Employees International Union Local 509 in Boston. Balay is author of the award winning books Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers and Semi Queer: Inside the World of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers.
Dr. Anjali Arondekar is Professor of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Founding Director of the Center for South Asian Studies. Arondekar is author of the award-winning books For the Record: On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India and Abundance: Sexuality’s History.
Balay and Arondekar will frame the conference’s work with keynote addresses focusing on queer labor relations and queer-caste relations. Matt Brim, Executive Director of CLAGS and author of Poor Queer Studies: Confronting Elitism in the University, will open the conference.
CLAGS invites proposals from scholars, artists, and activists. Topics may include but are not limited to the following:
- Class stratification in queer higher education
- Transnational networks of queer solidarity
- Transgender material lives
- Queer Marxism
- Disability, queerness, and class
- Queer-class data
- Geographies of queer and uneven development (Global South, postsocialist, rural)
- Working-class queers
- BIPOC, queer, elite
- Queer CUNY
- Queer-class kinships
- Latino/a/e queer-class fiction
- Carceral geographies and queer-class formations
- Queer-class literature, public culture, and art
- Sex work
- Transgender healthcare defunding
- Queer-class community spaces
- “Queer” refugees and asylees
- Class-based queer pedagogies
- Queer labor
- Queer mentorship at the class margins
- HIV/AIDS and queer/class/race relations
- Reassessing queer gentrification
- Anti-black limits of queer-class relationality
- Neoliberalism then and now in queer studies
- Capitalism and queer resistance
- Queer-class archives
- Queer erotics of class crossover
- New forms and structures of queer-class relations
We welcome proposals for:
- Individual papers
- Panel sessions
- Roundtable discussions
- Workshops
- Film screenings
- Visual presentations
We encourage scholarly and creative submissions that align with the conference theme. Proposals should be no longer than 300 words and must be submitted via our ONLINE FORM by September 1, 2025. Successful applicants will be required to register for the conference by November 15, 2025.
CLAGS recognizes the importance and the difficulty of holding an in-person conference in New York City. We seek creative solutions for international and national participation, and we appreciate your understanding about the material and technological limitations of the Center. Keynote addresses will be livestreamed, as well as uploaded to CLAGS’ YouTube channel. Please check the conference link at https://queerclassrelations.commons.gc.cuny.edu/ for updates about possibilities for virtual participation. At this time, we do not have travel funds available. Should they become available, we will make an announcement on the conference page.
Registration
The Queer-Class Relations Conference is funded primarily through sliding-scale registration fees. Given the conference’s class commitments, we ask registrants to use this opportunity to contribute to the collective good by paying as much as you are able and paying the top fee if you will be reimbursed by your institution or organization.
$250 Supporter registration: (designed for attendees who will be reimbursed by their institution or who are able to contribute this amount to the conference)
$200 General registration: (designed for attendees who are employed full time—activists, artists, and scholars—to cover basic conference expenses)
$100 Discounted registration: (designed for underemployed, precarious workers, artists, activists, and contingent, adjunct, and teaching faculty and available to any attendee who needs a discount)
$50 Student registration: (designed especially for graduate and undergraduate students and available to any attendee—activists, artists, and scholars—who needs an additional discount)
$10 Expanded registration: (designed for attendees who wish to contribute financially to the conference)
Conference email: [email protected].
For more information about CLAGS, visit clags.org.
