Heather Love and Jen Rosenblit

Left: Image courtesy of Heather Love. Right: Photo credit Kate Raines/Plate 3 Photography, pictured Addys Gonzalez.

Wednesday, June 25, 2014, 7:00 - 9:00pm

At EFA Project Space, 2nd floor of EFA Center (323 W. 39th St, Manhattan)

Building on her recent work on the Stigma Archive and queer affect, Prof. Heather Love will facilitate a participatory lecture/workshop in response to Jen Rosenblit’s improvisational movements and experiments with "presence." 

Prof. Love is currently at work on a project researching the source materials for and archives of Erving Goffman’s 1963 book, Stigma : On the Management of Spoiled Identity. Goffman theorized stigma as a trait or characteristic that could severely damage, or spoil, his or her identity. Physical disability, conviction of a felony, and homosexuality are all examples of stigma in Goffman’s work.

Jen Rosenblit’s improvisational movements in Scenarios for Hovering explore the idea of levitation as a way to understand the body’s relationship to the physical space and other works. She does not claim a space for her performance, but rather looks for ways to be present, to show up and decide, in the moment, how appearing responds to the contents of a space, or does not. 

This event is organized in conjunction with the exhibition Failing to Levitate on view June 6 - July 3, 2014. Please click here for more information about the exhibition and follow the projects as they evolve at failingtolevitate.net.

Heather Love is Associate Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania. She received her A.B. from Harvard and her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. She is the author of Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History (Harvard, 2007), the editor of a special issue of GLQ on the scholarship and legacy of Gayle Rubin ("Rethinking Sex"), and the co-editor of a special issue of New Literary History ("Is There Life after Identity Politics?"). A book of her essays and lectures has just come out in Taiwan (Queer Affect Politics: Selected Essays by Heather Love, ed. Jen-Peng Liu, ShenLou Press). She has current projects on new readings methods in literary studies, the sociologist Erving Goffman, and pedagogy, mentorship, and generations in queer studies. 

Jen Rosenblit has been making dances in New York City since 2005 and holds a B.A. from Hampshire College. She has performed for Ryan McNamara, Sasa Asentic, Young Jean Lee and Yvonne Meier. She has taught improvisation and performance through CLASSCLASSCLASS, Movement Research, TISCH, Bard, Bowdoin College, Hollins University and lectured at Yale and Harvard. Rosenblit has won numerous awards, including  a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, a fellowship from Insel Hombroich, Germany, and a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant. Her current work, a Natural dance premieres at The Kitchen in NYC May 29-31. www.bottomheavies.blogspot.com.