5th Annual Sexuality Summer School welcomes international speakers to Manchester

08 May 2012

Free public lectures by Ann Cvetkovitch, Lois Weaver and Mary Cappello on 22, 23 and 24 May (all at 5pm) in John Casken Lecture Theatre, Martin Harris Centre.

This year’s Sexuality Summer School draws upon the success of its previous years, embracing an interactive learning model that combines intensive workshops, discussion panels, lectures and student-lead seminars in order to construct a supportive research community over the course of four days.

This year, the conference turns towards the idea of Homophobia and Other Aversions, bringing together researchers from diverse fields including English Studies, Cultural Studies, Sociology, Media Studies, Performance Studies and many others to discuss and critique representations and understandings of gender, sexuality and queerness as they relate to aversion. Our confirmed speakers are Ann Cvetkovitch, Mary Cappello and Lois Weaver.

Accompanying the Summer School will be three public lectures, free and open to all with no booking required. All lectures will take place at 5pm in the John Casken Lecture Theatre, Martin Harris Centre.

Tuesday 22 May: Ann Cvetkovich (Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, University of Texas)
"To Be Able to Stand Not Knowing": Depression, Creativity and Self-Aversion

Drawing from her forthcoming book, Depression: A Public Feeling, Cvetkovich will address the summer school theme by considering the prevalence of self-hatred within everyday life and creative practices that address it, as well as ongoing debates within queer theory about the politics of positive and negative affects.

Wednesday 23 May: Lois Weaver (Professor of Contemporary Performance Practice, Queen Mary, University of London)
A Long Table on Senses of Aversion

A Long Table is a performance installation that uses the form of a dinner party as a structure for public debate to encourage informal conversation on serious subjects and to experiment with formats that inspire public engagement.

Thursday 24 May: Mary Cappello (Professor of English, University of Rhode Island)
Vice Viscera: The (Dis)gustatory Implications of Aversion

Mary Cappello recently won a Guggenheim Fellowship for her literary non-fiction, which explores forms of disruptive beauty, figuring memory in a postmodern age, bringing incompatible knowledges into the same space, and working at the borders of literary genres.