How to Do Queer with Things

To celebrate Queer History Month this February, the Centre for Modern Studies is delighted to announce that Dr. Robert Mills of the Queer at Kings group of King's College, London will host a two-hour, interdisciplinary workshop to think about the intersection of things queer, material and historical.

The workshop hopes to to bring together staff, students and members of the public interested in gender and sexuality issues - in the past as well as in the present - for an informal discussion and exchange of perspectives based around a short piece of assigned reading. Following brief introductory remarks by Robert Mills, and a response from Dr. Victoria Coulson, we aim to open up a focussed, wider conversation in which participants can share their views.  

Dr Mills is the author of 'Suspended Animation: Pain, Pleasure and Punishment in Medieval Culture' (2005), the editor of 'The Monstrous Middle Ages' (2003), and is currently at work upon a monograph entitled 'Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages: Experiences in Translation' and a new project tentatively entitled 'Medieval Dog Love', which will explore the roles played by canines in shaping medieval discourses of the human, as well as representations of interspecies desire and human-animal affect more generally.

All are invited to read in advance a short article Bob has written on related topics which, alongside his talk, will help form the basis for further group discussion:

Robert Mills, 'Queer is Here? Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Histories and Public Culture', History Workshop Journal 62 (2006), pp. 253-63.  Queer is Here (PDF , 91kb)

Those who would like to meet Bob informally and discuss research interests prior to his talk are invited to come to BS/008 between 4.45pm and 5.45pm.

For more information, please contact Jason Edwards jason.edwards@york.ac.uk or Liz Buettner elizabeth.buettner@york.ac.uk.