Sexuality Summer School 2024: Queer Friendship and Other Intimacies

Monday 27th – Friday 31st May 2024

This year, the SSS returns with the theme ‘Queer Friendship and Other Intimacies’, which will bring into focus how new forms of friendship, kinship, activism and creative collaboration have emerged in queer, feminist and trans lives and politics. We shall explore how these have generated enduring affiliations and deep attachments – as well as conflicts, frustrations and disappointments – in both the past and in the present; and we shall trace their emergence in research and writing, film and performance, as well as in activist and mutual aid networks that respond to today’s ‘care crisis’.

Public Events Programme:

NB: This is a draft schedule – please check exact times on our blog nearer to the event dates.

Monday 27th May, 12pm-2pm

Opening Public Lecture: ‘Partner Uncoupled: Queer Theories and Methods for Sustaining Kinship’

Teagan Bradway (author of Queer Experimental Literature: The Affective Politics of Bad Reading (2017) and co-editor (with Elizabeth Freeman) of Queer Kinship: Race, Sex, Belonging, Form (2022).

With an introduction by Dr. Monica Pearl, ‘On Queer Friendship’

Venue: The Anthony Burgess Foundation, 3 Cambridge St. M1 5BY 

No booking required, all welcome.

Monday 27th May, 6pm-8:30pm

Film screening and Discussion: After Louie (dir. Gagliostro, 2018)

Q&A with director Vincent Gagliostro, Monica Pearl, Nathaniel Hall, chaired by Jackie Stacey

Venue: HOME 2 Tony Wilson Pl, Manchester M15 4FN

Booking required: Click here to book.

Tuesday 28th May, 7pm-8:30pm

Live Performance: The Last Show Before We Die

By the Hotter Project (Ell Potter and Mary Higgins)

Venue: QUEER LIT, 27 Great Ancoats St, Ancoats, Manchester M4 5AJ

Booking required. Click here to book.

Wednesday 29th May, 12:30pm-2pm

Roundtable Discussion: ‘Queer Friendship and Activism’

Speakers: Monica Pearl, Will Nutland, Hafsa Qureshi, Yvonne Richards Cooper, chaired by Jackie Stacey

Venue: QUEER LIT, 27 Great Ancoats St, Ancoats, Manchester M4 5AJ

No booking required, all welcome.

Wednesday 29th May, 6.30pm-8pm

Book Launch: Jason Okundaye‘s Revolutionary Acts: Love and Brotherhood in Black Gay Britain (2024 Faber)

Jason Okundaye will be in conversation with Jess White.

Venue: Blackwell’s Bookshop, University Green, 146 Oxford Rd, Manchester M13 9GP

This event is co-sponsored by the Centre for New Writing (University of Manchester)

Booking is required. Click here to book.

Thursday 30th May, 12:30pm-2pm

Roundtable on ‘Queer Friendship and Academic Collaborations’

Celebrating the publication of The Richard Dyer Reader with Richard Dyer, and co-editors Glyn Davis and Jaap Kooijman, chaired by Jackie Stacey

Venue: SALC Graduate School Seminar Room C1.18, Ellen Wilkinson Building, The University of Manchester, M15 6JA

No booking required, all welcome.

Thursday 30th May, 6pm-7:30pm

‘Intellectual and Other Intimacies’: Heather Love and Christina Lupton in conversation with Monica Pearl, chaired by Jackie Stacey

Venue: SALC Graduate School Seminar Room C1.18, Ellen Wilkinson Building, The University of Manchester, M15 6JA

No booking required, all welcome.

Postgraduate registration for SSS 2024 is now full. You are welcome to join the waiting list. Please visit our blog for more information.

 About the SSS

The Sexuality Summer School (SSS) is a postgraduate summer school held annually in May at the University of Manchester. During the same week the Summer School also hosts a series of public events including lectures, films and performances. Throughout the year the Sexuality Summer School also co-sponsors events at the University and at venues like Contact and HOME, including Queer Contact and POUTfest.

The Sexuality Summer School is a five-day event for postgraduates, organised by the Centre for the Study of Sexuality and Culture (CSSC) at the University of Manchester since 2008 and funded by the University of Manchester Faculty of Humanities, Manchester Pride and Screen. The Sexuality Summer School brings together postgraduates, researchers and international scholars, as well as artists and filmmakers, to facilitate dialogue and discussions that speak to contemporary debates in queer and feminist sexuality studies, with a particular emphasis on the interdisciplinary study of culture.

You can find details of all of our past summer schools, including posters and public events details, on the left hand side of this page. You can also see a sample schedule. See “updates and related events” for all updates about the Sexuality Summer School and all other events that you might be interested in.

For more information about the Sexuality Summer School, email sexualitysummerschool@gmail.com to get on the mailing list, Facebook Sexuality Summer School or tweet @SSS_Manchester.

Updates & Related Events

Posted on

Event of Interest: Professor David Alderson’s Inaugural Lecture 

‘Beyond Subcultures: Populism, Hegemony and Cultural Production’ Wednesday 24 April, 4.15-6pmMartin Harris Centre, Room G16  Alan Sinfield once distinctively theorised both the New Left generally and liberation movements individually as subcultures, but regarded these positively in the context of the defeats the Left had suffered during the 1980s. The recent emergence of culture wars directed …

Continue reading “Event of Interest: Professor David Alderson’s Inaugural Lecture “