Internationally renowned queer theorist Judith Halberstam will speak about gender conceptions shown in recent animated movies when she visits Auckland University next month. Judith Halberstam Judith Halberstam, a Professor of English and Director of the Centre for Feminist Research at the University of California at San Diego, has carved a reputation for her ground-breaking work on gender. Enigmatic, insightful and frank, Halberstam is a well-known academic personality in high demand on international speaking circuits. A regular journalist for feminist magazine BITCH and The Nation, she is also a participant in the drag king community. Her first book, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, explored the impact of gothic culture across film and media. Then her Female Masculinity subverted conventional gender paradigms by arguing that masculinity does not belong to men. Halberstam's most recent book, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender bodies, Subcultural Lives, further extends this exploration of gender by examining queer subcultures and the increasing visibility of transgender culture in the popular sphere. Halberstam's public lecture will be presented by the University of Auckland's Department of Film, Television and Media Studies on 7 August 2008. In the lecture, Halberstam will once again challenge the mainstream conception of gender by highlighting elements in children's Pixar animation films that many of us overlook. Referring to films such as Shrek, Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc. as examples of what she terms the ‘Pixarvolt' genre, she highlights subtextual connections that these films make between queer embodiment and communitarian revolt. What emerges is a picture of children's animation films distinct from many of its adult counterparts in its imaginative possibilities for the construction of future inclusive communities. Judith Halberstam speaks at 6:30pm on Thursday 7 August in Lecture Theatre B4, Owen G. Glenn Building, 12 Grafton Rd, University of Auckland.