History
Southampton Stonewall Lecture 2014: Creating Our History, Celebrating Our Present: On the Entanglements of Queer Memory and History
by Laurence Georgin
Part of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History Month
The Southampton Stonewall Lecture speaker in 2014 is Professor Laura Doan from the University of Manchester. 
LGBT History Month seeks to claim our history, celebrate our past and create our future – a project not wholly dissimilar from all history-making practices organized around modern categories of identity. In this lecture I want to think about the workings of memory and history in relation to homosexuality. By scrutinizing the political impulses that produce gay icons such as Alan Turing, I am interested in figuring out what LGBT and queer history is good for.
Call for proposals: edited volume on gender in 20th-century eastern Europe and the former USSR
by Laurence Georgin
Call for papers, edited volume
Gender in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
Edited by Catherine Baker
This call for papers seeks contributors to an edited volume (c. 80,000 words) on the gendered histories of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union during the twentieth century, aimed primarily at an undergraduate/taught postgraduate readership. Drawing on current research into a broad range of societies and experiences within the scope of the volume, it aims to explore whether or how far the course of the twentieth century has made it possible to speak of a common history of gender in this part of the world. Since the early 1900s, the region has witnessed the collapse of multinational empires into nation-states; the human devastation and divided legacies left by the Second World War and the Holocaust; the transformation of society and the economy under Communist power, and the divided legacies that this too has left behind; the break-up of the Warsaw Pact bloc and the remaining federations into nation-states that were to be remade in the image of a democratic, free-market ideal. Yet these grand narratives of transformation and transition risk obscuring divergences and specificities that historians of gender may also need to take into account.
Contributions may focus on one country or may have a broader comparative scope, but all proposals should indicate how the material can contribute to an understanding of the region as a whole. The coverage of the volume will be balanced across the time frame of the twentieth century and the region under consideration. Proposals are welcome regarding any part of the east European region or the former USSR. A major UK publisher has expressed interest in publishing the volume as a paperback, subject to successful completion of their review process.
Aspects that might be discussed within essays include, but are not limited to:
- Borderlands and the question of ‘national indifference’
- Childhood and youth
- The Communist revolutions and takeovers
- Communist parties in power
- Consumption, the home and everyday life under state socialism
- Feminism and other activist movements
- Interactions between the region and the rest of the world, including the Global South
- Labour, postsocialism and neoliberalism
- Oral history and memory
- Popular culture and the media
- Refugees and humanitarian relief
- Reproductive and sexual politics
- Queer and trans* histories
- Security and surveillance
- Socialist approaches to gender in theory and practice
- War and the military, including female participation on the front line
- War memory and commemoration
- Intersections of gender with other power relationships
Please send an abstract of 300–500 words to Catherine Baker (University of Hull) atcbakertw1@googlemail.com by Sunday 13 October 2013. Proposals will be reviewed immediately and notification will be made by the end of October 2013. Draft papers are likely to be due in July 2014. As part of preparing the book I hope to organise related conference panels e.g. at ASEEES in November 2014, although being able to attend a conference is not a requirement for taking part.
Catherine Baker
Queer Now and Then seminar series, University of Manchester
by Laurence Georgin
The Centre for the Study of Sexuality and Culture (CSSC), The University of Manchester
Public Events 2013-4 – All Welcome
Organised by Professor Laura Doan, this set of events welcomes a number of scholars to explore queerness in relation to time and history.
Wednesday 16 October, 5pm (Venue TBC) (co-sponsored with EAC) Susan Lanser, Brandeis University ‘How to Do the Sexuality of History’
Tuesday 19 November, 5pm (Venue TBC)
Jackie Stacey, University of Manchester (EAC) ‘Embodying Queer Temporalities: The Future Perfect of Peggy Shaw’s Butch Noir’
Tuesday 10 December, 5pm (Venue TBC)
Hal Gladfelder, David Matthews and Kaye Mitchell, University of Manchester (EAC) ‘Porn Now and Then: A ROUNDTABLE’
Further details on the scheduled events, including confirmed venues, will be released in the near future: see http://queerculturenetwork.wordpress.com/ and http://sexualitysummerschool.wordpress.com/
Major new work on Czech homosexuality
by Laurence Georgin
A major new work on homosexuality in the Czech lands has just been published in Prague by Argo press. The title, which can be translated as ‘Homosexuality in the History and Society of the Czech Lands: I Love Those of My Own Sex‘, completes a trilogy of books which have recently appeared on modern Czech homosexuality and which set out in a range of academic articles the culture and historical context of queers in central Europe. This particular volume concentrates on historical development from the 18th century through to the years of communist Czechoslovakia. It is especially important in breaking through the (usual) focus of such historical studies employing only American or western European examples, and sets out a new basis for research on the history of homosexuality in East-Central Europe. The volume includes a chapter by Mark Cornwall (Southampton) about homosexuality among the nationalist Sudeten Germans in the first half of the 20th century.
The Life and Trial of Maria Duran
by Laurence Georgin
One of Dr Francois Soyer’s research interests focuses on ideas about gender and sexuality in the early modern Iberian world (Spain, Portugal and their respective empires). He is particularly interested in the responses and reactions to female homosexuality. Read more…
The Life and Trial of Maria Duran
by Laurence Georgin
One of Dr Francois Soyer’s research interests focuses on ideas about gender and sexuality in the early modern Iberian world (Spain, Portugal and their respective empires). He is particularly interested in the responses and reactions to female homosexuality. He is currently writing a book on the life and trial of Maria Duran, a Catalan woman, transvestite and lesbian who was arrested and prosecuted by the Portuguese Inquisition in 1741-1744.
Treason and Sex: The Case of Colonel Redl
by Laurence Georgin
The case of Colonel Alfred Redl, who betrayed Austrian military secrets to the Russians before the First World War, is one of the most notorious cases of high treason. Despite this, and despite numerous academic and popular works about Redl, the homosexual dimension of the case has received little treatment (or has constantly been distorted and simplified by commentators). This research project of Mark Cornwall is part of his larger project about Loyalty and Treason in the late Habsburg Monarchy.
Women travellers exploring gender in the Canadian North at the beginning of the 20th century
by Laurence Georgin
Laurence Georgin’s PhD research looks at British women who travelled to the Canadian North at the beginning of the 20th century, particularly women who travelled on their own or with a female companion. Very much like their male counterparts had done for centuries, these women travelled to Canada in order to discover new territories and explore unfamiliar places.
Sodomy and Dishonour in Eighteenth-Century Hampshire
by Laurence Georgin
The history of homosexuality eighteenth-century England has been so far dominated by fascinating studies of the rich array of London resources. Perceptions of same-sex sexual activity in the provinces, in contrast, has been relatively overlooked. Dr Julie Gammon’s study takes a case study of trials and court martials for sodomy and attempted sodomy in the county of Hampshire over the long eighteenth century to consider whether sexual behaviour and attitudes towards gay sex in port cities such as Southampton and Portsmouth and county towns such as Winchester and Salisbury differed from the models traditionally constructed through metropolitan sources.
“Exiles of Love”: Lída Merlínová and the World of the Czech Lesbian
by Laurence Georgin
Homosexuality in Czech culture and society is only recently being explored by Czech historians and usually the focus is on the homosexual male. Prof Mark Cornwall’s research project focuses instead on Czech lesbians during the period 1918-1945 and especially the work of the popular (yet now largely unknown writer) Lída Merlínová.