Dr Anna Schaffner from the Department of Comparative Literature is co-convening a seminar series on the History of Sexuality at the Institute of Historical Research, London.
The founding of the History of Sexuality seminar marks a recognition that the field has grown enormously during recent years. The new seminar reverses the lacuna in sustained seminar provision in London in this field. While the history of sexuality is a diverse area of study that refuses straightforward categorisation, it nonetheless focuses broadly on men and women as sexual beings in the past, on the categories of heterosexuality and homosexuality through which sexual selfhood has been experienced, and, moving beyond this binary, on other historical expressions of gender identity and sexual experience. The History of Sexuality seminar at the Institute explores historical perspectives on themes as varied as sexual reform and identity-based movements, sexuality and urban space, medical and criminological discourses on sexuality, and representations of sexuality. It also explores the historiography of the field, along with those varied methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of the sexual past that have shaped the history of sexuality as a sub-discipline. Finally, the seminar provides a forum for an exploration of the intersections between the history of sexuality and other related academic practices – including those of gender, feminism, psychoanalysis, and the study of the emotions.
Anna will co-convene the seminar series with Chiara Beccalossi (Oxford Brookes), Alison Oram (Leeds Metropolitan University), Craig Griffiths (Queen Mary), Christopher M. Waters (Williams University), Heike Bauer (Birkbeck), Jana Funke (University of Exeter), Julia Laite (Birkbeck), Jane Mackelworth (Queen Mary), Justin Bengry (Birkbeck/McGill), Claire Hayward (Kingston University), Matt Cook (Birkbeck), Sean Brady (Birkbeck), Sarah Toulalan (University of Exeter).
For more information on the seminar series, including a list of topics, please see the Institute of Historical Research webpage here: http://www.history.ac.uk/events/seminars/385