The mass shooting at a queer Latin Night in Orlando in July 2016 sparked a public conversation about access to pleasure and selfhood within conditions of colonisation, violence, and negation. Queer Nightlife joins this conversation by centering queer and trans people of colour who apprehend the risky medium of the night to explore, know, and stage their bodies, genders, and sexualities in the face of systemic and social negation. The book focuses on house parties, nightclubs, and bars that offer improvisatory conditions and possibilities for "stranger intimacies," and that privilege music, dance, and sexual/gender expressions. Queer Nightlife extends the breadth of research on "everynight life" through twenty-five essays and interviews by leading scholars and artists. The book's four sections move temporally from preparing for the night (how do DJs source their sounds, what does it take to travel there, who promotes nightlife, what do people wear?); to the socialities of nightclubs (how are social dance practices introduced and taught, how is the price for sex negotiated, what styles do people adopt to feel and present as desirable?); to the staging and spectacle of the night (how do drag artists confound and celebrate gender, how are spaces designed to create the sensation of spectacularity, whose bodies become a spectacle already?); and finally, how the night continues beyond the club and after sunrise (what kinds of intimacies and gestures remain, how do we go back to the club after Orlando?).

About the Author
Kemi Adeyemi is Assistant Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at University of Washington.

Kareem Khubchandani is Mellon Bridge Assistant Professor, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at Tufts University.

Ramon Rivera-Servera is Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University.

Book Information
ISBN 9780472054787
Author Kemi Adeyemi
Format Paperback
Page Count 306
Imprint The University of Michigan Press
Publisher The University of Michigan Press
Weight(grams) 425g