Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments To edit an anthology is to open yourself up to the words and worlds of experience of others, all the more so if the anthology is about the possibilities of queer collaboration and cross-cultural engagement globally. As cochairs of the “Queer Globalization , Local Homosexualities: Citizenship, Sexuality, and the Afterlife of Colonialism” conference, sponsored by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies of the City University of New York’s Graduate Center in the spring of 1998, in which many of the essays in this volume were originally presented, we had the good fortune of collaborating with some of the most creative and incisive scholars writing today in the field of queer studies, the conference’s planning committee: Gayatri Gopinath, Miranda Joseph, Oscar Montero, José Esteban Muñoz, Geeta Patel, Ann Pellegrini, Chandan Reddy, and Alan Yang. We were also fortunate to count on the dedication, resourcefulness , and intelligence of Heidi Coleman and Jay Plum, the conference’s coordinators , and Jill Dolan, CLAGS’s executive director at the time. As executive director, Jill ushered in for CLAGS a period of growth in community involvement and exciting scholarly projects, such as the series of Rockefeller-sponsored national events on the theme of “Citizenship and Sexualities: Transcultural Constructions,” which our conference inaugurated. She was in many ways our guiding spirit, and she remains an inspiration for us of the kind of engaged intellectualism that CLAGS represents. We would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Rockefeller Foundation , which was the primary sponsor of the conference, as well as the Michael C. P. Ryan estate, whose additional support made the conference possible. We wish to thank the CLAGS series editors, José Esteban Muñoz and Ann Pellegrini , and our NYU Press editor, Eric Zinner, and his assistant, Emily Park, for their commitment and belief in the project. Finally, we would also like to thank the people without whose love and friendship this project would not have been completed. For Martin: Dacal a salamat to my comrades: Deb Amory, Rick Bonus, Javid Syed, Jack Guza, Gerry Cuachon for their support during this period. And to my family, who still wonders about the “books” that I am writing and why I am still not rich and famous. Despite their bafflement, I know there is unconditional love. For Arnaldo: besos y abrazos siempre to my partner and lover Greg de Silva, for the diasporic routes of affection that have brought us, and kept us, together. vii Queer Globalizations ...