April 10, 2008

Thursday, 5:00 pm
10383 Bunche Hall

Allan Punzalan Isaac

The Byuti and Danger of Performing Transgender and Transnational Belonging in Paper Dolls (Bubot Niyar, Israel 2006) by Tomer Heymann

After the second intifada in 2000 Israel closed its borders and expelled Palestinians who were no longer welcome as service labor in Israel. 300,000 foreign workers were brought in to do jobs Israelis could not or did not want to perform including giving care to the elderly in Orthodox neighborhoods. Neither Muslim nor Jewish, neither Arab nor Jew, 30,000 Filipino workers fill the service labor gap among Israelis. This paper focuses on a recent documentary, Paper Dolls (2006), which provides a painfully moving account of the lives of Filipino transgender caregiver-drag performers in Tel Aviv.

Allan Punzalan Isaac, Associate Professor of English at Wesleyan University, specializes in ethnic American and Asian American aspects of American literary and cultural studies. His book American Tropics: Articulating Filipino America (University of Minnesota Press, 2006) is the recipient of the Association for Asian American Studies Cultural Studies Book Award. He teaches a broad range of undergraduate and graduate courses in Theory and Literature, Asian American Studies, Critical Race Theory, and Comparative Race Studies.

Organized by the Department of Asian American Studies

May 7, 2008

Thursday, 5:00 pm
James Bridges Theater

Screening of
Parting Glances and I Don't Know

The Crank, in affiliation with the class "Out of the Closet, Into the Vaults: LGBT Film and the Outfest Collection," will host a screening of the UCLA Film and Television Archive's newly restored print of Parting Glances (35 mm, 1986), co-starring Steve Buscemi. This seminal independent film depicts the lives of several men in New York at the beginning of the AIDS pandemic. Parting Glances will be preceded by a rare archival treasure: I Don't Know (16 mm, 1972), the UCLA thesis film of filmmaker/"rock 'n roll anthropologist" Penelope Spheeris (The Decline of Western Civilization, Wayne's World, the forthcoming Gospel According to Janis). Shot on location in Los Angeles, I Don't Know chronicles the final days of a tragic, charismatic trans couple as they share lyrical moments and Warholesque musings in the bath, astride a chopper, and while dancing topless. For more information click here.