Department of Art

Bottomhood is Powerful
A Lecture by Nguyen Tan Hoang
Monday, October 15, 2012 | 12 noon - 1:15 PM
Contemporary Arts Center Colloquium Room (CAC 3201)

This lecture examines the common perception of Asian American men as social and sexual “bottoms” in popular American imagination. Nguyen’s formulation of “gay Asian bottomhood” demonstrates the ways that anal erotics and bottom positioning refract the meanings of race, gender, sexuality, and nationality in American culture, and in so doing, simultaneously enable and constrain Asian American men in moving-image media. He argues that bottomhood is an ethical manner of relating to others, not through dominance and mastery, but through the risk of vulnerability, humiliation, and shame. Gay male video pornography and sex cruising websites constitute case studies. The talk will be supplemented by a short video screening.

Nguyen Tan Hoang is an internationally exhibiting video artist and Assistant Professor of English and Film Studies at Bryn Mawr College. Nguyen Tan Hoang received his MFA in Studio Art from UC Irvine in 1996.

This event is collaboratively sponsored by the Department of Art, the Department of Women’s Studies, the Department of Asian American Studies, the Ph.D. Program in Visual Studies, and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Center. For further information, please contact leungss@uci.edu

Image by Young Chung, "Inner Peace."