Dr. Edmond Chang and Tyler Everett Adams present this month's WGSS colloquium on "Barbie, Muñoz, and Utopian Camp: A Conversation."

What does it mean to queer camp?  How does camp intersect with race, gender, sexuality, identity, & performativity?  Most fabulously, what do Barbie (2023) & camp have to do with utopia?  According to Tyler Everett Adams and Edmond Y. Chang, quite a lot.  Drawing on their shared love of the work of José Estaban Muñoz & their recently published essay "'That's Because They're Dream Houses, Mother******!': Barbie, Utopian Camp, and a Conversation Between Two Allans" (Liminalities, 2024), we will chat, kiki, and discuss how camp can offer a means to consider vibrant, queerer futures, as well as extend queer of color, feminist, and performance studies critique.

Tyler Everett Adams is a multi-hyphenate theater maker and doctoral candidate pursing his PhD in Interdisciplinary Arts at Ohio University where his scholarly focus is Theater & Performance Studies, and his creative focus is Directing. His research investigates camp as a form of vernacular theory in American popular culture and attempts to recuperate camp’s affective and subversive potential. His general interests include queer theater and performance art of 20th & 21st centuries, camp and kitsch aesthetics, drag performance practices, queer theory, and queer hauntology.

Edmond Y. Chang is an Associate Professor of English at Ohio University. His areas of research include technoculture, race, gender, and sexuality, queer game studies, digital humanities, popular culture, and 20/21C American literature. Recent publications include “Gaming While Asian” in Made in Asia/America, “Why are the Digital Humanities So Straight?” in Alternative Historiographies of the Digital Humanities,

and “Queergaming” in Queer Game Studies. He is the creator of Tellings, a high fantasy tabletop RPG, and Archaea, a live-action role-playing game. He is also an Editor for Analog Game Studies and a Contributing Editor for Gamers with Glasses.