Asiapacifiqueer panels on asian gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender cultures at biennial ASAA conference, Australian National University, Canberra, 29 june-2 july 2004.

AsiaPacifiQueer (APQ) (http://apq.anu.edu.au), an Australia-based group of academics and students researching queer peoples and cultures in the Asia-Pacific region, would like to encourage scholars working on queer topics and issues in the Asian region to participate in this event. In particular, the APQ team is interested in organising a stream of queer-themed panels within the 2004 ASAA conference. APQ believes that a series of themed panels on Asian gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender cultures, histories, and representations will help challenge the dominant heteronormativity of the field of Asian Studies. We also hope that a dedicated stream of queer-themed panel presentations at ASAA in 2004 will help build national and international networks of scholars and postgraduate students researching Asian and Pacific queer cultures and that this will lead to further collaborations in the future. We are particularly keen to encourage the participation of scholars and postgraduate students from the Asian region, but we regret that APQ does not have the resources to be able to offer financial assistance for overseas participants. However, we are happy to help interested overseas scholars in their own efforts to raise travel funds to attend ASAA 2004.

If you are interested in presenting a paper on Asian queer histories, cultures or representations at ASAA and would like to participate in a panel with other scholars working on related topics then please contact Dr Mark McLelland (UQld) (m.mclelland@uq.edu.au) and Dr Peter Jackson (ANU) (peterj@coombs.anu.edu.au) with a title and a 250 word abstract by 31 January 2004. We will then liaise with contributors in putting together a stream of appropriately organized panels to be submitted to the ASAA conference organizers.