Report on the third AsiaPacifiQueer Conference:

University of Melbourne, 8 December 2002

The APQ3 conference on the theme of “The Uses of Queer Asia: Research, Methods & Diasporic Intellectuals” took place at the University of Melbourne on 8 December 2002. With its emphasis on practice, social engagement, and the relationship between academic enquiry and cultural politics APQ3 followed on thematically from the 2002 annual Cultural Studies Association of Australia conference, held at the University of Melbourne between 5-7 December, on “Ute Culture: The utility of culture and the uses of cultural studies.” APQ3 also shared with the CSAA conference the party at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image at Federation Square on the evening of Saturday, December 7––the party, featuring a Multimedia Drag King Extravaganza, functioned as the closing night event for CSAA and the opening night event for APQ3. The drag king performance was a particularly fabulous way to kick off APQ3, featuring as it did the rare talents of Asian Australian kings LeeBruceLee and Drastic Boy in an intriguing performative conversation with “bogan” king and AC/DC channeller, Scon Bott.

The conference itself featured six 30-minute presentations from postgraduate students as well as more senior academics: presenters included Vera Mackie (Curtin University of Technology and Victoria University of Technology), Amy Sueyoshi (San Francisco State University), James Welker (Nanzan University), Romit Dasgupta (University of Western Australia), Mark McLelland (University of Queensland), and Ben Authers (Dalhousie University). We were particularly pleased to be able to welcome Amy Sueyoshi and James Welker from the USA and Japan, respectively. Their papers, on the place of Yone Noguchi in the bohemian homoerotic culture in San Francisco at the turn of the century, and female homoeroticism in 1970s manga comics, made a great contribution to the conference as a whole, and we are particularly excited to see APQ reaching out to become a more internationally extensive network of scholars. Especially encouraging were Dr Sueyoshi’s comments praising APQ for its attention to queer sexualities within the Asia-Pacific region as a whole, which she contrasted with the situation in the United States where such discussions are generally limited to the Asian American experience. The conference was well-attended by a mix of graduate students and more senior academics. Among the latter were visiting Cultural Studies scholars from Taiwan, Professor Naifei Ding––a keynote speaker for the CSAA conference––and Professor Kuan-hsing Chen.

As well as the six papers presented, we were also able to screen the independent Australian documentary film, Different Shades of Pink (Alexander Ku, 2001), due to the generosity of the film’s producer, Pak Kin Ho, who sent us a copy for the conference screening. The film, which focuses on three inter-ethnic relationships between gay men in Sydney, was very germane to the conference theme, and provided a thought-provoking community-based counterpoint to the more academic content of the papers.

APQ conferences provide an especially valuable opportunity for postgraduate students working in the area of gender and sexuality in Asia-Pacific cultures, as it provides these early career researchers with a forum to present their work and engage in dialogue with other researchers in the field. Postgraduate presenters at APQ3 offer the following remarks about the significance of APQ:

Ben Authers writes:

I would like to thank the organisers of the AsiaPacificQueer 3 and the Cultural Studies Association of Australia for providing the funds that enabled me to attend the conference - the diverse range of papers made for an interesting and enjoyable day. Because my own study is primarily in Law and multicultural Canadian Literature I found it especially useful to hear how researchers in Asian Studies are using interdisciplinarity and queer studies, while the conference's focus on methodology resonated in its note of caution about the role and ethics of applying this to a non-western context. I thoroughly enjoyed APQ3 and meeting those involved, and hope to be able to participate in APQ conferences in the future.

Romit Dasgupta writes:

This is just a short note of thanks to convey my appreciation to both the organizers of this year’s AsiaPacifiQueer (APQ) and the Cultural Studies Association of Australia (CSAA) for providing some amount of financial support, towards covering travel expenses to the conference, earlier this month. This support was of great help, particularly given the high cost of travel from Western Australia to the Eastern States.

This opportunity to present at a forum like APQ has been extremely beneficial to my research. As discussed at various points during the course of the day’s proceedings, many researchers working in the intersections of queer studies, cultural studies, and Asian studies, often find themselves isolated and marginalized in queer studies and cultural studies forums due to the Asia focus of their research, and in Asian studies forums due to the queer focus. This problem is particularly acute for postgraduate researchers. Hence, I believe, the opportunity to talk about your research and issues related to that research with others working in similar areas (and facing similar concerns) in a space like APQ is extremely beneficial and empowering to postgraduate researchers like myself.

Thanks to the academic and other benefits I have obtained through my participation at this year’s APQ, I fully intend to participate in future APQs, even after completing my postgraduate study. I do hope that both APQ and CSAA will continue to encourage postgraduate participation in the future.

The formal presentations at APQ3 were followed by a general discussion about future directions for the organization. All present––including both presenters and audience––affirmed the significance of APQ’s project and expressed the hope that the organization can continue to work as it has done over the past two years, to provide a forum for scholarly exchange on research into gender and sexual cultures in the Asia-Pacific region. We also discussed the possibility of APQ becoming a more formal organization, in order the better to secure funding for bringing in researchers from less wealthy Asian nations to present their research at APQ conferences; and the idea of starting an APQ e-mail list. Both of these ideas will be followed up in the coming year.

Finally, the APQ organisers would like to thank all who contributed to the success of the conference. The Cultural Studies Association of Australia provided a small grant that offset the travel costs of several postgraduate delegates. Alvin Koh, our postgraduate representative, contributed greatly to the conference’s success and smooth running with all his help dealing with its logistical organization. Pak Kin Ho generously offered Different Shades of Pink for the conference screening free of charge. And the fantastic performances by of the three kings from King Victoria set the conference off to an unforgettable start.

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