The Sexuality Summer School 2012 drew 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. In 2012 the conference turned 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. Main speakers were Ann Cvetkovitch, Mary Cappello and Lois Weaver.
Events included:
- (Public) Plenary lectures by Ann Cvetkovich, Lois Weaver and Mary Cappello
- Tuesday 22nd May, 5pm, John Casken Lecture Theatre, Martin Harris Centre. Â Ann Cvetkovich:Â ‘”To Be Able To Stand Not Knowing”: Depression, Creativity, and Self-Aversion’
- Wednesday 23rd May, 5.15pm, Kanaris Room, 2nd Floor, Manchester Museum. Â Lois Weaver: “A Long Table on Senses of Aversion”
- Thursday 24th May, 5pm. Â Mary Cappello: “Vice Viscera”
- Workshops and discussions with the plenary speakers
- Student-led workshops on the theme of homophobia and aversion
- Debate on Marriage led by Monica Pearl and Nicole Vitellone
- Workshop on psychoanalysis and homophobia led by Jeremy Tambling
- Workshop on homophobia in Manchester
- Workshop on homophobia and migration led by Adi Kuntsman
- Film Screening
Ann Cvetkovich is Garwood Centennial Professor of English and Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her publication An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures (Duke, 2003) develops a queer approach to trauma, contending that the field of trauma studies, limited by too strict a division between the public and the private, has overlooked the experiences of women and queers. Mary Cappello is Professor of English at the University of Rhode Island and recently won a Guggenheim Fellowship in non-fiction. As a practitioner of literary non-fiction, Mary Cappello is primarily interested in creating 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.  Lois Weaver is Professor of Contemporary Performance Practice at Queen Mary, University of London. She is a lecturer, performance artist, writer, director and activist. She was co-founder of Spiderwoman Theatre, Split Britches Company and the WOW Theatre in New York and Artistic Director of Gay Sweatshop Theatre in London.
Sexuality Summer School 