Center for the Humanities: 50th Anniversary (1969-2019)
Monday Night Lecture Series | Fall 2019

Sequel as Revolution: Taylor Mac's Queer Time

Sean Edgecomb • CUNY

September 23 @ 6 P.M.
Daniel Family Commons, Usdan University Center

For almost twenty years, Taylor Mac has reformed queer performance in the United States, proudly unfurling the banner “the revolution will not be masculinized.” This lecture critically considers his* magnum opus, “The 24-Decade History of Popular Music,” among other works, to illustrate how Mac redefines the notion of the sequel as a productive form for queer continuance and its analysis. Declaring that “all stories are sequels,” Mac consistently guides audiences to work against patriarchal notions of historicism, teleology and linear temporality, demonstrating how queer alternatives may be imagined to promote art as revolutionary social action, and giving voice to the marginalized, who have not been the beneficiaries of normative cultural patterns. The malleable, immersive nature of his work endows audiences with a broadly defined queer authority to assist in reforming not only homogenous and exclusive narratives of the past, but also the very work itself, spinning a limitless web of queer sequels and queer potential.

*When on stage and in performance Taylor Mac uses the gender pronoun “judy,” but otherwise uses male pronouns in his daily and creative life.

All lectures begin at 6 p.m. and are held in the Daniel Family Commons (located in the Usdan University Center) unless otherwise noted.

Revolutions: Material Forms, Mobile Futures
View Fall 2019 Lecture List