7th Queering Afro-Luso-Brazilian Studies International Conference

30th of September to the 2nd of October 2025
 

Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon
 

Introduction

Active since 2014, with past editions taking place in France (Sorbonne University), Sweden (Dalarna University, UK (Birmingham University), Portugal (University of Porto) and Brazil (São Paulo University), the international Conference “Queering Afro-Luso-Brazilian Studies” returns to Portugal for its seventh edition, at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon and jointly organized by Quir Research Hub (CITCOM), the Center for Comparative Studies, and the Faculty of Letters and University of Lisbon.

The conference aims to reassess the artistic, literary, and cultural canon of Portuguese-speaking countries, exploring the practices and archives of historically marginalised writers and artists whose trajectories propose alternative counter-canons, alongside underrepresented and underexplored cultural traditions.

Focusing on literary and artistic studies, the conference seeks to foreground representations of sexual dissidence and gender nonconformity in textual bodies. It aims to bring together researchers, writers, artists, activists, and cultural agents whose work challenges the dominant sex-gender order embedded in the modern-colonial paradigm.

The queer - or quir - interrogation of textual histories is thus linked to a broader, intersectional critique of mononormativity, gender binarism, patriarchy, and cisheteronormativity, as well as homonormativity, homonationalism, and other emerging regulatory frameworks within textual cultures and contemporary sociopolitical contexts.
 

Call for papers

The organisers welcome proposals that examine literature and the arts, with particular emphasis on interart connections, through queer, transfeminist, and/or decolonial perspectives. Submissions should aim to deconstruct the colonial gender order, deeply rooted in monogamy, sexual and gender binarism, patriarchy, and cisheteronormativity. Contributions are also encouraged on imaginaries, practices, and alternative possibilities to the modern-colonial regime, including resistances, subversions, and perversions of the sexopolitical norm in so-called “post”-colonial contexts.

Topics and suggested lines

• Queer, transfeminist and/or decolonial readings of the literary and artistic canon, as well as works and authors historically marginalized by the literary and artistic systems;
• Artistic and literary genealogies and archaeologies: counter-canonical movements and traditions;
• Queer and LGBTQIA+ archives: material cultures, ethics of the past, and memory politics;
• Literature, cinema and other trans, queer, and LGBTQIA+ arts;
• New normativities: models, ideas, and stereotypes in the context of homonationalism and neoliberalism;
• Migrations, displacements, and diasporas LGBTQIA+;
• Sexualities and sex-dissident communities: narratives, performances, artistic representations, and field studies;
• Literatures, imaginaries, and non-binary languages;
• Cracks, ruptures, and critical fables over gender colonialism;
• Ways of life, practices and liminal perspectives, borderline or fronteirizas;
• Activisms and artivisms queer, quir and cuir;
• Performances and performativities queer: body, community and praxis;
• Historicizing cisgenderism and heterosexuality;
• AfroQueer: focusing the geopolitics of the African context and the afrodescendent diaspora;
• Critical studies on masculinities;
• Others.

Organizing Committee

• Helder Thiago Maia (FLUL - Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)
• Luísa Semedo (Universidade Paris-Sorbonne, França)
• Marzia D’Amico (FLUL - Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)
• Salomé Honorio (ICS - Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)
• Sofia Zanini (ICS - Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)

Scientific Committee

• Alberto da Silva (Université Paris Sorbonne, France)
• Alda M. Lentina (Dalarna University, Sweden)
• Anna Klobucka (UMass Dartmouth, USA)
• Fernando Curopos (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, France)
• Maria Araújo da Silva (Université Paris Sorbonne, France)
• Mário Lugarinho (Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil)
• Paulo Pepe (University of East Anglia, UK)

Work Languages

Portuguese, English, Galician.

Registrations

• Send the abstracts to: quir.hub@gmail.com
• The proposals must contain name, institutional affiliation (if present), title of the proposal and abstract.
• The abstract must contain maximum 1000 words, 5 key words, indication of the topic/suggested line, and bibliography.
• Indication of the preferred mode of participation: in presence or online.
• Important: only researchers in training and people with access difficulties can opt for online participation. In case of doubt, please contact the organizing committee

Schedule

• Deadline for the submission of abstracts: 20th of May 2025.
• Deadline for the acceptance of abstracts: 20th of June 2025.
• Deadline for registration payment: 30th of July 2025.

Registration fee

• Until 15th of June 2025:

Professors and researchers with institutional affiliation: 30€
Students: 10€.

• Until 30th of June 2025:

Professors and researchers with institutional affiliation: 60€
Students: 20€