Queer in Europe - (Ashgate 2011)

Salle Henri Janne (15ème étage)

Abstract
The book Queer in Europe takes stock of the intellectual and social status and treatment of queer in the New Europe of the twenty-first century, addressing the ways in which the Anglo-American term and concept 'queer' is adapted in different national contexts, where it takes on subtly different overtones, determined by local political specificities and intellectual traditions. Bringing together contributions by carefully chosen experts, this book explores key aspects of queer in a range of European national contexts, namely: Belgium, Cyprus, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, The Nordic Region, The Netherlands, Poland, Russia and Spain. Rather than prescribing a universalizing definition, the book engages with a wide spectrum of what is meant by 'queer', as each chapter negotiates the contested border between direct queer activist action based on identity categories, and more plural queer strategies that call these categories into question. The first volume in English devoted to the exploration of queer in Europe, this book makes an important intervention in contemporary queer studies.

This event will discuss the research project organised by Lisa Downing (University of Exeter, UK) and Robert Gillett (Queen Mary University of London, UK) that resulted in the publication of a 2011 book in the Ashgate 'Queer Interventions' series entitled Queer in Europe: Contemporary Case Studies. The co-editors and two of the contributors, Bart Eeckhout and Lukasz Szulc will present aspects of the book followed by a discussion about the origins and potential futures of the broader project.

Bio-bibliographies
Lisa Downing is Professor of French Discourses of Sexuality and Founding Director of the Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Sexuality and Gender in Europe (CISSGE) at the University of Exeter, UK. A specialist in histories and theories of sexuality, she is the author and editor of numerous books, including Desiring the Dead: Necrophilia and Nineteenth-Century French Literature (EHRC, Oxford, 2003), Perversion: Psychoanalytic Perspectives/ Perspectives on Psychoanalysis (co-edited with Dany Nobus, Karnac, 2006), The Cambridge Introduction to Michel Foucault (CUP, 2008) and Queer in Europe: Contemporary Case Studies (co-edited with Robert Gillett, Ashgate, 2011). Her most recently completed monograph, The Subject of Murder: Gender and Exceptionality in the Making of the Modern Killer is forthcoming with Chicago University Press. She is currently co-writing (with Iain Morland and Nikki Sullivan) a book-length critical study of sexologist John Money’s diagnostic concepts, by contributing a section on ‘paraphilia’.

Robert Gillett is Senior Lecturer in German at Queen Mary, University of London. He has published very widely on German, Austrian and comparative literature, cultural studies and film. He has made a special study of the German proto-queer author Hubert Fichte, on whom he has published a bibliography, a collection of essays, and some 25 articles. He has been teaching courses on LGBTQ studies, alone and with others, for nearly 20 years. In addition to his work on Fichte, he has written on queer issues for The Pink Paper, Moderna Sprak and Kulturpoetik, and has collaborated with Lisa Downing on a number of projects of queer import, including a forthcoming special issue of the journal Sexualities.

Bart Eeckhout is Associate Professor of English and American Literature at the University of Antwerp and a leading activist in the Flemish LGBT movement. He has degrees from Ghent University and Columbia University and has been a visiting faculty member of Fordham University and New York University. In Antwerp he teaches a course in queer fiction and supervises various doctoral theses in the field. Much of his work in queer studies derives from his activism, where he serves on the Board of the Flemish umbrella organization çavaria. His publications often emerge directly out of his collaboration with other activists, most recently with Paul Borghs for International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family and with David Paternotte for Journal of Homosexuality.

Lukasz Szulc is a PhD candidate at the Department of Communication Studies of Antwerp University (Belgium). His doctoral project explores normative and counter-normative discourses on sexuality and gender in cyberspaces tailored for sexual and gender minorities in Poland and Turkey. He obtained his master degree in Journalism and Social Communication at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland) in 2009. His recent publications investigate discourses on non-hegemonic sexualities and genders in Poland (« Queer in Poland: Under construction », 2011) and Turkey (« Contemporary discourses on non-heterosexual and gender non-conforming citizens of Turkey », 2011).