12.4: Legends, Statements, and Stars
TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly: 12.4: Legends, Statements, and Stars
Guest Editors: Eva “007” Pensis, Victor Ultra Omni, and Noelle Deleon "007"
Calling all scholars, artists, and community members to join us for an upcoming special issue of TSQ: Trans Studies Quarterly dedicated to ballroom culture.
In 1972, two femme queens—Lottie and Crystal—created the first ballroom house: the Royal House of Labeija. This house, along with the houses of Corey, La Wong, St. Laurent, Christian, Pendavis, Chanel, Ebony, Omni, Xtravaganza, Princess, Aphrodite, and more, forged a new global phenomenon known as ballroom culture. In the years since, ball culture has spread from Harlem to Brooklyn to New Jersey to D.C to Chicago–and now worldwide. Through multiple waves of commodification, ballroom culture continues to thrive and stand as a source of creativity and innovation in movement, sound, fashion, language, story-telling, and community-building.
Since the publication of Marlon Bailey’s pathbreaking 2013 Butch Queens Up in Pumps, house-structured ballroom culture has arrived in the academy and come of age. As editors, we are interested in how the voices and labors of trans and gender non-conforming ballroom cultural producers reconfigure the project of scholarship in relation to house ball communities. What does Black trans feminism offer the study of house ball cultures? This special issue seeks to recalibrate the ballroom’s archive to intentionally include its audience: the ballroom’s community elders, current participants, and the future children yet to come. We imagine this archive to address everyday issues that have rarely made their way into academic writing on ballroom: the role of memory work within house ball communities; material concerns and conditions facing house ball community members, particularly Black and brown queer and trans feminine youth and elders; issues of access and education; intergenerational reflections on house ball communities in relation to lived experience; ongoing issues within ballroom and Black queer social formations including substance use, sex work, anti-Blackness and colorism, seropositivity, and transmisogyny–issues that are often sanitized out of ballroom’s documentation in favor of its dazzling effects.
Paying homage to ballroom pioneer Kevin Ultra Omni’s signature ball, Legends, Statements, and Stars seeks to unsettle conventional narratives surrounding ballroom culture by centering the material realities of Black and brown trans and queer individuals within the community. We invite contributions that explore the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality, as well as the past and future of house-structured ballroom culture.
Themes Include:
- Memory work of ballroom beyond the '90s
- Uplifting recent archival work within ballroom
- Digital, audiovisual, and media representations
- Sex Work and Sex Workers Rights
- Femme Queen Genealogies of Ballroom Culture
- Intergenerational reflections on ballroom communities
- Addressing everyday issues within ballroom culture such as substance abuse, colorism, housing, and more
- Sonic submissions
- The Category of Realness
- Underground Sexual Economies
- Trans men, Studs, and Butches in Ballroom History
- Intergenerational conversations and oral histories
- Archiving and remembering ballroom's rich history
- Demystifying access to education and resources
- HIV/AIDS Crisis
- Transnational Ballroom Culture
- Dance/Movement/Sound History and Storytelling
Submission Guidelines:
We welcome academic articles, testimonies, interviews, sonic submissions, audiovisual documentation, and multimedia presentations. The multimedia presentation will be hosted through a parallel call to TSQ*Now. Submissions should be accessible to both academic and community audiences.
Community Response:
We're extending a special invitation to voices often excluded from academic discourse: Black and brown trans and queer folks, intergenerational participants, community elders, and all those who have graced a ballroom floor.
Calling Potential Contributors/This is who we want to see: Cleis Abeni, N’yomi Stewart Balenciaga, Fatima Jamal, Shamari Reid, Martez Smith Lanvin, Kemar Jewel XLanvin, KK “Juicy” Strickland, Jenny Lee, Jonovia Lanvin, Namir Fearce, Emily Bock, Zelda Ninja and For All Queens, Ballroom Ghana, Donte Lauren, Niambi Prodigy, Ballroom We Care, Connek Ja, and the social media collectives: @fqcrazysexycool, @ballroom4palestine, and @Kunt_de_transmasc. And if we did not call you out, just bring it, and let us know why.
For More Information:
Contact Editors Eva “007” Pensis, Victor Ultra Omni, and Noelle Deleon "007"
Email: legendsstatementsandstars@gmail.com
To submit a manuscript, please visit https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/dup-tsq. Please note that TSQ, like other Duke University Press Journals, has moved to ScholarOne, replacing the prior Editorial Manager platform. If this is your first time using ScholarOne, please register first, then proceed with submitting your manuscript. If you have any difficulties with the process, contact the journal at tsqjournal at gmail.com. All manuscripts must be double-spaced, including quotations and endnotes, and blinded throughout. You must also submit an abstract, keywords, and biographical note at the time of initial submission. Please visit the editorial office's website for a detailed style guide.
TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly is an academic journal edited by Francisco J. Galarte, Dylan McCarthy Blackston, micha cárdenas, Ciara Cremin, and Abraham B. Weil, and published by Duke University Press. TSQ aims to be the journal of record for the interdisciplinary field of transgender studies and to promote the widest possible range of perspectives on transgender phenomena broadly defined. One issue of TSQ each year is a non-themed open call, with the other three issues devoted to special themes; every issue also contains regularly recurring features such as reviews, interviews, and opinion pieces. To learn more about the journal and see calls for papers for other special issues, https://femresin.unm.edu/transgender-studies-quarterly/
