AHRC
Thursday 23 February: Trans Identities on Screen: Local and Global Perspectives
by Lewis Brennen
Join us in celebrating LGBT History Month 2017 with a free event on the subject of Trans Identities on Screen: Local and Global Perspectives, to be held on Thursday 23rd February at 6pm in Avenue 65/1133 (LTA).
The event will include a screening of Tchindas (Cape Verde, 2016) and THEY (UK, 2016), followed by a Q&A on queer and trans representation in film, with local artist and maker of THEY, Asten Holmes-Elliott, and Helen Wright, director of the Scottish Queer International Film Festival (SQIFF). Wine and snacks will be provided.
All are very welcome! Please do share with anyone you think may be interested, including UG/PG students.
This event is kindly sponsored by the Department of Modern Languages, the Pulse LGBT+ Staff Network, and the AHRC-funded project Calling the Shots: Women and Contemporary UK Film Culture.
With best wishes,
Eleanor K. Jones and Sophie Holmes-Elliott (Modern Languages)
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.