Kale Bantigue Fajardo is an Associate Professor of American Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Fajardo completed his undergraduate studies Cornell (Developmental Psychology/Feminist Studies/Southeast Asian Studies) and his MA and PhD in cultural anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Fajardo is the author of Filipino Crosscurrents: Oceanographies of Seafaring, Masculinities and Globalization (2011) and a Co-Editor of Q&A: Queer Voices from Asian North America (2021.) He has been published in books and journals such as Mains'l Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime History; Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity; Filipino Studies: Palimpsests of Nation and Diaspora; GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies; and The Transgender Reader 2; among others. He has a new essay in Hydro-Humanities: Water Discourse and Environmental Futures (2021.) Fajardo is currently a Deputy Editor at The Island Studies Journal, a member of the editorial board of the Critical Ethnic Studies Journal, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies in Chicago.

In this talk, Fajardo will lecture on different kinds of boats, waters, and queer river-and-seafaring Filipino/a/x figures in contemporary Philippine Cinema. He will specifically discuss and closely read films such as Sagwan (Oar/Paddle) (2009), Marino (Seaman) (2009), Muro-Ami (Reef Hunters) (1999) and Thy Womb (2012), and he will draw from Southeast Asian/Philippine/global maritime histories of seafaring, boat-building, and fishing and queer/trans/feminist theories, as well as oceanic/archipelagic/island studies. In doing so, Fajardo will reveal the postcolonial and decolonial implications of these films in relation to indigeneity, tourism, neoliberal economics, global Filipino/a/x migration, and heteropatriarchy.

This Gatty lecture will take place in person at the Kahin Center, but people are also welcome to join us on Zoom. Please register here if you wish to attend via Zoom: https://cornell.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEkf-6qrzkoE9JnC6QyUxpkU33AtG…

For questions, please contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.

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