Early Career Scholars Talk by Gigi Otálvaro, Associate Director of Stanford Living Education

Talk on Tuesday, March 25, 2025 at 4:15pm (tea at 4:00pm) in LUT 200

“Book Talk with author Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa on Erotic Resistance: The Struggle for the Soul of San Francisco" 

Please join us for a book talk and Q & A with interdisciplinary artist, writer, educator and psycho-geographer Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa. In conversation with filmmaker Vicky Funari, Gigi will present her recent book, Erotic Resistance (University of California Press 2024), which celebrates the erotic performance cultures that have shaped San Francisco. It preserves the memory of the city’s bohemian past and its essential role in the development of American adult entertainment by highlighting the contributions of women of color, queer women, and trans women who were instrumental in the city's labor history, as well as its LGBT and sex workers' rights movements. In the 1960s, topless entertainment became legal in the city for the first time in the US, although cross-dressing continued to be criminalized. In the 1990s, stripper-artist-activists led the first successful class action lawsuits and efforts to unionize in US history. Erotic Resistance relates these phenomena through archival materials, artworks, and original interviews with legendary burlesquers and strippers. To share their remarkable stories, Otálvaro-Hormillosa uses diverse methods—visual and performance analysis, historiography, and ethnographic research, including participant-observation as both performer and spectator. 

This event is sponsored by the Spanish Department, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the Early Career Scholar's Fund.