Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

a genre in providing commentary on American politics. Broadly, the David/Sanders case allows me to unpack
the tensions that emerge around race-based comedy in the current “post-racial”, politically correct American
context.
1O
Mediating Sexualities (Chair, Lee Wallace)
Anita Brady
Read My Lips: Tracing the Politics of the Same-Sex Kiss
From kiss-ins protesting anti-gay legislation, to couples celebrating marriage equality, the same-sex kiss is
repeatedly politicised in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) politics as a marker of social
tolerance, and an agent for social change. Yet LGBT/queer studies has never examined how or why the
same-sex kiss has become so significant. As a consequence, I suggest, the political limits and political
possibilities of same-sex kissing in contemporary media cannot be fully understood. This paper outlines a
research project that examines what the image of the same-sex kiss means for anti-homophobic politics.
That research traces the history of the kiss in LGBT activism, examines the significance of its presence and
absence in the media, and considers the impact that changing media environments have on its politics.
Cristyn Davies* & Kellie Burns
Disassembling sexuality and Whiteness in Orange is the New Black
The US comedy-drama Orange is the New Black mediates the cosmopolitan sensibilities of its central
protagonist, Piper Chapman, against the setting of a women’s minimum-security federal prison. We analyse
the program’s portrayal of gendered and sexual citizenship as these categories intersect with race and
ethnicity, arguing that Netflix delivers a consumable imaginary of women’s incarceration rather than
engaging with the complexities and violence of systemic racism in the massive prison industrial complex. We
consider how race and racism are inextricably entrenched in the neoliberal projects of constructing “the
prison” and “the inmate”, but also in shaping post-network television audiences. In doing so, we disassemble
Whiteness as a taken-for-granted subject/viewing position and consider how discourses of cosmopolitanism,
hygiene and flexibility produce and manage racialised subjectivities as antithetical to neoliberal citizenship,
justifying why certain impacts of neoliberalism are experienced disproportionately by racialised
communities.
Kellie Burns* & Cristyn Davies
The Trouble with The New Normal: Producing and consuming gay domesticity
This paper analyses the mediation of gay family in the NBC situational comedy The New Normal (NBC),
where family is constructed through a commercial surrogacy arrangement between two gay men (Bryan and
David) and a local surrogate (Goldie). We argue that gay parenting is normalised through its association with
the ideals of contemporary neoliberal citizenship – cosmopolitanism, entrepreneurialism and consumption.
David and Bryan are elite, white gay men whose lifestyle and sensibilities contrast those of Goldie, who
becomes a surrogate to fund a new life in a bigger city for her and her daughter (Shania) who she conceived
when she was very young. The normalization of gay family also occurs by mediating “difference” within
broader spectrum of non-traditional family structures, invisiblising the politics of race and class inequalities
and overlooking the complex politics underpinning commercial fertility and surrogacy services.
1P
Feminist Manifestoes (Chair, Anthea Taylor)
Clare Monagle Mary Daly: Feminist theology and the catalytic manifesto
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