The Byuti and Danger of Performing Transgender and Transnational Belonging

Thursday, April 10, 2008
Film Discussion: The Byuti and Danger of Performing Transgender and Transnational Belonging

5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
10383 Bunche Hall (10th floor)
UCLA Campus
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Free and open to the public.
Web announcement here.

A colloquium with Allan Punzalan Isaac, Associate Professor of English, Wesleyan University, analyzing the film "Paper Dolls" ("Bubot Niyar," Israel 2006) by Tomer Heymann.

After the second intifada in 2000 Israel closed its borders and expelled Palestinians who were no longer welcome as service labor in Israel. 300,000 foreign workers were brought in to do jobs Israeli’s could not or did not want to perform including giving care to the elderly in Orthodox neighborhood. This paper focuses on a recent documentary, Paper Dolls (2006), which provides a painfully moving account of the lives of Filipino transgender caregiver-drag performers in Tel Aviv.

Allan Punzalan Isaac, Associate Professor of English at Wesleyan University, specializes in ethnic American and Asian American aspects of American literary and cultural studies. His book American Tropics: Articulating Filipino America (University of Minnesota Press, 2006) is the recipient of the Association for Asian American Studies Cultural Studies Book Award.

Sponsored by the UCLA Department of Asian American Studies, the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, the Center for Near Eastern Studies, and the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Politics.