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Shifting Cultures of Intimacy in Southeast Asian Visual Representation 
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This panel investigates shifting understandings of sexual subjectivity and cultures of intimacy in Southeast Asian film and other visual representation. The centrality of cinema to formations of sexual modernities in the region cannot be overstated. In Southeast Asia, cinema from its beginnings represented a site in which cultures of intimacy were disseminated and tried out and from which they were learned, rejected, or adapted.

With regard to the present, cinema represents a particularly fraught space for sexuality in several Southeast Asian locations. Thus in Thailand, where film is currently the most censored medium, cinema represents a site in which intimacy consistently rubs up against the juridical authority of the state. At a time when Thai national cultural identity and citizenship continue to be closely articulated with normative prescriptions for sexuality, mainstream films have, for one, focused on the question of how the social suffering of sexual minorities can be made to count politically. In comparison, the forte of independent filmmakers and artists has been to conceive of sexual histories beyond those organized solely by national recognition or rights discourses.

While their parameters differ significantly, other contemporary Southeast Asian cinemas and visual cultures—including the diasporic—likewise register innovation in representing cultures of intimacy as well as struggles over definitions of sexual citizenship.

We seek contributions on the affective, normative, juridical, historical or other aspects of intimate or sexual cultures in Southeast Asian film as well as papers that identify moments of breakage, exhaustion, innovation, renegotiation, or remediation of intimacy in other visual media.

Please send an abstract of approximately 300 words to Brett Farmer (brettf1@mac.com) and Arnika Fuhrmann (fuhrmann.arnika@googlemail.com) by Nov. 1, 2009.