Events during LGBTQ+ History Month
Queer Cambridge: An Alternative History, Q&A with author Simon Goldhill
Monday 3rd February 14:00-15:00
Online and in-person at The Triangle, Room S1-G1G2G3, Cambridge University Press and Assessment
Queer Cambridge recounts the untold story of a gay community living, for many decades, at the very heart of the British Establishment. Making effective use of chiefly forgotten archival sources – including personal diaries and letters – the author reveals a network within which queer Fellows of Cambridge University explored bold new forms of camaraderie and relationship. During difficult decades when homosexuality was unlawful, gay academics – who included celebrated literary and scientific figures like E. M. Forster, M. R. James, Rupert Brooke and Alan Turing – lived, loved, and grew old together, bringing new generations into their midst. Their remarkable stories add up not just to an alternative history of male homosexuality in Britain, but to an alternative history of Cambridge itself.
To register: cecilia.marshall@cambridge.org
Queer Postdocs in Action
Thursday 6th February, 17:00-18:00
Postdoc Academy Mill Lane
Queer Postdocs in Action is a set of interactive talks organised collaboratively by LGBTQ+@Cam (aka Q+) and the Postdoc Academy, exploring what it means to be a queer postdoc at Cambridge and if queerness shapes or does not shape our research. These sessions will provide a dialogue with postdocs from various fields to look at the similarities and differences in their experiences and will help build a community of queer researchers at Cambridge. To register for the panel discussion, the first event in the series.
To register: https://www.training.cam.ac.uk/opda/event/5619598
Cambridge University LGBTQ+ Network drinks
Thursday 6th February, 18:00-21:00
The Anchor pub on Silver Street
Opportunity to get together with members of the LGBTQ+ Network and attendees at the Queer Postdocs in Action event to make connections and celebrate LGBTQ+ History Month.
Bowie Love, a lecture with Prof. Alex Sharpe
Thursday 13th February, 18:00-19:30
Trinity Hall Lecture Theatre, Trinity Hall, Trinity Lane, Cambridge, CB2 1TJ
This lecture will consider the idea of love as agape, a Greco-Christian term capturing the idea of a love for humanity. It will be argued that it is this love, which privileges otherness over self, love over law, that cascades through David Bowie’s work. In thinking through Bowie love, the lecture will draw on philosophers, Max Scheler and Alain Badiou, as well as fierce opponent of agape, Friedrich Nietzsche. The lecture will explore three love lessons apparent in Bowie’s work: love as letting go; love as humility; and love as posthuman. However, it will begin by explaining how Bowie subverted social norms which parade as necessity, and therefore, how Bowie love is inextricably tied up with freedom, yours and mine.
To register: Select tickets – Cambridge University LGBTQ+ network LGBTQ+ History Month talk - Prof. Alex Sharpe: 'Bowie Love'
In defence of what’s there: scavenging as queer and feminist methodology, a talk with Dr Sophie-Marie Niang
Monday 24 February 2025 12:30-13:30
S1, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DP, and online via Zoom
This talk will reflect on the concept of scavenging as a methodology of refusal. Anchored in black studies, black feminist thought, queer studies and indigenous studies, scavenging seeks to centre care and repair in our intellectual inquiries. How does taking methodologies and its implications seriously change the way we conduct research? What possibilities does scavenging offer for feminist and anti-racist scholarship? And what are some of the hurdles of trying to implement such a methodological approach?