Jen Grove and Jana Funke presented at the Critically Queer conference, Bristol, September 2018.
Their paper was titled: “Transformations: Co-Producing Knowledge about Gender Identity and Sexual Science”.
Papers Given
“Your Sex Organs are ALIVE!” The Science of Sexual Pleasure in the Early Twentieth Century
On the 25th of September, Dr Sarah Jones gave a paper to Exeter’s History Society, titled ‘”Your Sex Organs are ALIVE!” The Science of Sexual Pleasure in the early Twentieth Century’.
‘Nearly Normal’: Queer Climacterics in the Scientific Works of G Stanley Hall and Marie Stopes
Our PhD student Kazuki Yamada presented at Exeter’s Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health Midlife Conversations conference, September 2018.
Kazuki presented on “‘Nearly Normal’: Queer Climacterics in the Scientific Works of G Stanley Hall and Marie Stopes”.
Sexologists as Collectors of Archaeological Erotica in the Late Nineteenth and Twentieth Century
Jen Grove presented on “Sexologists as Collectors of Archaeological Erotica in the Late Nineteenth and Twentieth Century” at the European Association of Archaeologists Annual Conference, Barcelona, in September 2018.
New perspectives on sexual science (1890-1960)
The project delivered a special panel at the 32nd Irish Conference of Historians at University College Cork, April 2018. The theme of the conference was “Sex, sexuality & reproduction: historical perspectives”. The Rethinking Sexology team spoke on “New perspectives on sexual science (1890-1960)”.
Queerer Modernism
Jana Funke, our project director, delivered the keynote address at Queer Modernism(s) II: Intersectional Identities in April 2018 on ‘Queerer Modernism’. According to the conference report Jana “demonstrated how contemporary focus on inversion obscured the greater variety in discourse on sexuality. Funke showed how Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West used Marie Stope’s sexology to understand their failure to achieve sexual pleasure in their marriage, showing the possibilities of queer identification beyond lesbian experience. Funke invited her listeners to move beyond the closed circuit of identitarian labels, and, in doing so, ‘queer’ queer studies”.
“The scientists who shattered the repressed view of sex and brought us closer to our liberated selves”
Our project director, Professor Kate Fisher spoke at Sexology and ideology in the age of institutionalization (1960-2000), Centre interdisciplinaire d’étude des religions et de la laïcité (CIERL), Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), March 2018. Her paper was titled: ‘“The scientists who shattered the repressed view of sex and brought us closer to our liberated selves” (Naomi Joseph, reviewing Wellcome Collection, Institute of Sexology) Early Sexology in Twentieth Century Culture’.
Gaps in the Archive: Sexology and Film in and beyond Anders als die Andern (1919)
In December 2017, Dr Ina Linge, Associate Research Fellow on the Rethinking Sexology project, spoke at the symposium ‘The Visual Archives of Sexology’, organised by Dr Heike Bauer and Dr Katie Sutton, at Birkbeck, University of London. Her paper was on ‘Gaps in the Archive: Sexology and Film in and beyond Anders als die Andern (1919)’.
Making LBGT* History: Gender and Sexuality in ‘Anders als die Andern’ (1919)
Dr Ina Linge, Associate Research Fellow on the Rethinking Sexology project, spoke at the annual Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland (AGS) conference at the University of Warwick in September 2017. The title of her paper was: ‘Making LBGT* History: Gender and Sexuality in Anders als die Andern (1919)’.
Annual John Addington Symonds Celebration
In October 2017, Dr Jen Grove gave the Fourth John Addington Symonds Celebration lecture for the Institute of Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition, University of Bristol, organised in collaboration with OutStoriesBristol. Jen spoke on ‘EP Warren’s Classical erotica: LGBT+ activism and objects from the past’.
Abstract
Edward Perry Warren (1860-1928) is best known for giving his name to the “Warren Cup”, an ancient Roman goblet with explicit scenes of men having sex together (now in the British Museum). The classical antiquities Warren collected at the beginning of the twentieth century include many of those we now turn to for visual evidence of homosexual acts in the ancient world.
Drawing on original archive work, this talk will explore how Warren used such artefacts from ancient Greece and Rome to campaign for the acceptance of same-sex relationships in the modern world. Warren was particularly influenced by John Addington Symonds and his Greek-inspired idea of a comradely type of love between highly virile men.
This talk will also explore some of the problems of looking to Warren, the objects he collected, and the type of ancient relationship he was inspired by – between older and younger partners – for LGBT+ activism and education today.