Queer Music, Queer Theory, Queer Music Theory
by Lewis Brennen
Congratulations to Dr David Bretherton (Music), who has been awarded £175,236.80 from the AHRC Leadership Fellowship Scheme (Early Career Route) towards his research project ‘Queer Music, Queer Theory, Queer Music Theory’.
The Fellowship will allow David to take a lead in re-energising the debate about the nature of ‘queer music’, and to play a decisive role in the re-conceptualisation of the problematic notion of queer music from a music-theoretical and -analytical perspective. Focusing on selected works from the last two centuries, by composers such as Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Copland, Britten and Finnissy, this research will explore the emergence of queer musicology and critique earlier research. It will then interrogate the concept of queer music through several music-analytical case studies organised around core ideas from the discipline of queer theory.
The notion that modern Western society is dominated by a ‘heteronormative’ discourse favouring heterosexual relationships and ‘normal’ gender behaviours will be particularly important, because its analogue, musical convention, when subverted is often dubiously interpreted as autobiographical evidence of a composer’s queerness. This project seeks more nuanced and thoughtful alternatives, and will align queer musicology with other approaches in the Humanities.
University of Winchester LGBT History Lecture and Public Exhibition
by Lewis Brennen
February is the month that celebrates diversity and the University of Winchester’s Modern History Research Centre (MHRC) invites a guest speaker to talk about their research connected to diversity in history. For this academic year the Centre has chosen the theme of LGBT history, and Dr Emma Vickers (Liverpool John Moores University) will talk about ‘Sanctuary or sissy? Male cross-dressing as entertainment in the British Armed Forces, 1939-1945’ on the 10th February 2017.
In connection to this public lecture event and in partnership with Winchester Discovery Centre, the MHRC is also organising an exhibition where ten Postgraduates and Early Career Researchers will produce research posters on historical perspectives and events of LGBT communities in modern history (eighteenth century to present), which will be displayed in the gallery of the Winchester Discovery Centre (with a formal opening of the exhibition on the 10th February).
Please come along. For more information contact Dr Xavier Guégan (xavier.guegan@winchester.ac.uk).
Southampton Stonewall Lecture, Thursday 9 February: Professor Dagmar Herzog
by John Cornwall
The 2017 Stonewall Lecture will take place in Lecture Theatre A (Avenue Campus) on Thursday 9 February 6pm. All welcome but please register with Tracy Storey: t.p.storey@soton.ac.uk. The 2017 speaker is Professor Dagmar Herzog (CUNY), one of the leading historians of sexuality and homophobia. She will be speaking about:
LOVE AND PERVERSION: THE MODERN HISTORY OF HOMOPHOBIA.
Why has same-sex desire often been associated with weak egos, strong drives, and narcissistic character disorders?
Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud was never hostile to homosexuality. But post-Freudian analysts clung fiercely to a homophobic consensus, even if their reasoning changed under pressure of competing with sexuality researchers like Alfred Kinsey. This lecture will explain how homophobia and psychoanalysis evolved in tandem in the course of the sexual revolution of the 20th century. It explores how clever theory and activism finally got homosexuality removed from the official list of psychiatric illnesses – while reconceiving the connections between love and perversion for everyone.
The Southampton Stonewall Lecture is devoted to the history of homosexuality or LGBT history and is part of an annual lecture series organised by the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Southampton. The purpose of the lecture is to educate the present about the past; to showcase thinking and research about LGBT history; and to enhance the University of Southampton’s remit of promoting sexual diversity in the regional community.
