Academic

Sheffield Uni Does LGBT History

~ Cheryl

The History Department at Sheffield University has a great blog called History Matters. Right now they are doing a series on LGBT history and there is some excellent content already available.

In “The Past is not a Straight Line” Bodie A. Ashton makes the case for history being far more queer than most people think.

In “Tim Farron, the Bible and Queerness” Jo Henderson-Merrygold takes issue with the former leader of the Liberal Democrats over what the Bible actually says about gay people.

And in “Earinus: A Roman Civil Rights Activist?” I talk about one of my favorite Romans, a young eunuch whose sense of his own masculinity was so strong that he may have persuaded the Emperor Domitian to ban child castration.

Much more great content will be forthcoming in the next few weeks.

Gendered Voices – Day 2

~ Cheryl

Following on from yesterday’s post, here’s what we got up to on the second day of the Gendered Voices conference.

Session one was all about representation and began with Rosie talking about her research into coming out experiences. This is very valuable work, and the sort of thing that Berkeley and I will keep a close eye on as it can be used as evidence to encourage action by local and national government.

Next up an emergency fill-in from Louise (always a brave thing to do) about the 19th Century gothic writer, Lucas Malet, noted for her particularly morbid imagination. Malet was the daughter of novelist Charles Kingsley who wrote The Water Babies, an exceptionally unpleasant piece of Christian allegory aimed at kids. It is no wonder the poor woman grew up warped. There are a lot of people doing research on 20th century women Gothic writers, but Louise is the only one I know who is working on the 19th Century. I’m sure she’d welcome some company.

The final paper was from Jenn and was about trans and non-binary representation in literature, in particular the literary fiction market. Jenn says that they know of only nine literary novels featuring trans characters. I’m pretty sure I could name nine from the past year in SF, and a similar number in realist YA, but thus far Jenn is resisting all of my attempts to lure them to the Dark Side.

Session two was all about violence and was very intense. It began with Jassi, a lawyer, talking about girl soldiers. When we hear about child soldiers in the media it is always about boys, but in fact between 30% and 40% of child soldiers are female. Not only are they erased by the Western media, but if the war they are fighting in is halted then they will be forced back into subservient social roles by their supposed rescuers.

Elena talked about group counseling for victims of sexual violence. Apparently this is quite effective, whereas one-to-one counseling can often further isolate the victim. Elena says that it is very rarely used in the UK. That’s interesting, because this sort of counseling is specifically mentioned in the Equality Act as a circumstance in which trans women can be excluded from women-only spaces. I had assumed that it would therefore be common, but no, the government made all that fuss about trans women not being women over a situation that was very unlikely to arise.

Encouragingly, Elena said that the rape crisis center she is working with is trans-inclusive.

The final speaker was Patrick who talked about women volunteers in the IRA. There were apparently a lot of them, and the way that they worked reminded me a lot of the French Resistance. Interestingly the IRA, despite being Catholic, were (and presumably still are) pro-abortion. I gather from social media that one of these IRA women is now a Conservative parliamentary candidate.

The keynote speaker for the conference was Thangam Debbonaire, the current MP for Bristol East. It was really good of her to keep the commitment despite there being an election on and her seat being very much at risk. She also gave a great speech. She’d make a brilliant WEP MP, but I can’t blame her for going with a party that can get her elected, even if its policies on women’s issues are not as good as ours.

Session three was on masculinities and opened up with Katherine talking about Priapus and modern masculinity. Priapus, you may remember, is the Roman god with the massive dick. The Romans used pictures of him to demonstrate how supposedly virile they were. Katherine compared Roman poetry and graffiti to modern social media posts and came to the brilliant conclusion that dick pics are modern day Priapus images. If cameras had been around in Roman times, they would have sent people pictures of their own dicks too. And they would have sent them to men that they wanted to dominate as well as to women.

Charlotte talked about the contrasting portrayals of King Richard and Henry Bolingbroke in Shakespeare’s Richard II. It bemused me as to why Shakespeare, writing during the reign of Elizabeth, would have written about an effeminate king being replaced by a manly usurper. So I asked, and discovered that the play had been sponsored by Essex, who was in the process of plotting a coup at the time. I have no idea how Will talked his way out of that one. I’m sure that Elizabeth must have been tempted to do the “Off with his head!” thing.

The paper that generated most social media chatter was one by Henry on the gender of mediaeval clergy. Some historians hold that the clergy were seen as a third gender by the rest of society. Henry, by examining the writings of late mediaeval chroniclers, made a convincing case that many of them did not see themselves in that way, and indeed went to great lengths to show how manly they were in their own domain (which was the spiritual war against sin).

The final session was on feminism, and kicked off with Ana looking at the educational reforms promoted by the lesbian author, Bryher. She had some really good ideas about how to give kids better education, but they did not go down well with the Great British Public. The Daily Mail asked readers to give their own views on the proposals. One man wrote in to say that it was the duty of school to educate girls out of having an imagination.

This was followed by Teresa talking about historical fiction writer, Sylvia Townsend Warner. She sounds like someone I would like to read, especially her fantasy novel, Lolly Willowes.

Finally we had James, a philosophy student, asking, “Why is there Feminist Epistemology at all?” The title apparently riffs off a well-known paper about the theory of mathematics. James made some very good points, particularly about Standpoint Theory. However, I don’t think you can even begin to talk about what feminist epistemology might be until you have first defined what feminism is. As that’s enough to keep many philosophers busy for decades to come, I think James’s question will have to wait.

You will note that I found something good to say about every paper. Huge congratulations to the organizers. That’s what I call a quality conference. I do hope it runs again next year.

Gendered Voices – Day 1

~ Cheryl

With apologies for the delay, here’s a look back on some of the things that I heard about during the Gendered Voices conference last week. This post is about the first day’s papers. I’ll do one for the second day later.

The first session was all about stereotypes, and began with Sauleha talking about Muslim women in Frankenstein. I had entirely forgotten about this. There is a character in Mary Shelly’s book called Safie who is initially presented as a veiled, cowed Eastern woman, but who throws off her patriarchal shackles and becomes a character with a fair amount of agency and something of a happy ending. It is revealed that her mother was a Good Christian woman who was kidnapped by a Vile Oriental, and intimated that her ability to escape her situation is only because of her Christian blood.

One the one hand, headdesk, Mary, what were you thinking? On the other there are apparently signs of progressive thinking. One of the dafter things that 18th Century Britons believed is the idea that in Islamic theology women have no souls. Goodness only knows where they got this idea from. Apparently Mum (Mary Wollstonecraft) had swallowed this one whole, but Mary Jr. wasn’t so sure. She was, after all, writing about an artificial being, the Monster, whose claim to having a soul was far more dodgy than Safie’s.

Gender and theology and science fiction: I could not have asked for a more interesting start to the day.

Paper two from Leonie was about Vita Sackville-West and the book review program that she had on BBC radio, complete with actual audio from one of the shows. My goodness, that woman had a cut-glass accent. I can quite see where the idea of the Sackville-Bagginses came from. On the other hand, I ended up quite liking her. Vita shared her reviewing duties with a male colleague (whose name I have shamefully forgotten), each doing a show every other week. She listed the books she was going to cover in the Radio Times in advance, and encouraged readers to write in with their own views. She also managed close to a 50:50 gender split on authors. He just turned up for his shows and talked at his audience.

Finally in that session, Sam told us all about her research into gendered attitudes towards pain relief. I am going to be one of her test subjects in early June. Work like this is badly needed because there is very little understanding of how the various aspects of health care are different for women.

On then to session two which was all about religion, kicking off with our first male presenter, Alun, who was talking about the Song of Songs. This is a particularly intriguing part of the Old Testament, because it is basically about sex. Alun is interested in it because of the possibilities for sex-positive theology, which some parts of Christianity could badly do with. I’m interested in the possible origin of these verses.

Other parts of the Old Testament, specifically the tale of Jezebel, suggest that some people in ancient Israel worshiped other gods, including Baal and Asherah, who are of Mesopotamian origin. In Mesopotamia kings have a tendency to legitimize themselves by describing themselves as the Beloved of Ishtar (or some other version of the goddess). It is possible that the Song of Songs was originally a religious rite in which the goddess, in the form of the High Priestess, confirms the king’s right to rule because of his sexual appeal to her and the Daughters of Israel.

Next up was Jade who was talking about female divinity in Catholicism. Specifically she was discussing the figure of Lady Poverty, who features in stories about Saint Francis. She is depicted as someone at least as old as Adam and Eve, and therefore a semi-divine figure of sorts. Of course this being Catholicism her femaleness has to be controlled by marrying her to Francis. Personally I am deeply suspicious of the idea of a man marrying a personification of poverty; it has way too many sexist jokes about it. Interesting paper nonetheless.

Our final religious paper was Chiara who is studying the works of the experimental novelist, Kathy Acker. Acker has a complicated relationship with just about everything, and religion is no exception. Chiara was looking specifically at Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula and My Mother: Demonology, both of which have strong religious elements. Personally I want to read Pussy, King of the Pirates because, well I think that should be obvious.

After lunch we began with a session on fertility. One speaker had to cancel so we were down to two papers, starting with Claire on the subject of pregnancy and childbirth in mediaeval letter. She focused on the famous Paston letters from Norfolk, and in particular the matriarch, Margaret Paston. It is lovely to see sane discussion of pregnancy between a mediaeval husband and wife, though I suspect that the idea that all men through history have been uninterested in “women’s issues” is yet another of those 19th Century lies. If anyone knows why the Paston women were obsessed with eating (presumably very expensive) dates while pregnant, Claire would probably love to talk.

Maria told us all about a fascinating French novel, Constance et la Cinquantaine (Constance in Her Fifties), which is all about a group of feminist friends who panic when going through menopause because their men are deserting them for younger women. Apparently the only thing that results in a happy ending is becoming a lesbian.

The final session was on various expressions of gender. It began with Di explaining the complex history of the image of Medusa from a scary, quite masculine version in Bronze Age Greece to a much more feminine version in later times. The Romans, bless them, used both. I’m particularly fascinated by the image on the pediment of the temple in Bath, which shows the snake hair on the head of a male Celt.

James entertained us with images of gendered behavior from Sparta, which is a fascinating place (and which got very bad press from the Athenians). He didn’t specifically mention non-binary gendered presentation, but we chatted a bit and I do have a few clues to follow up. He did mention the possibility that songs written to be sung by a girl’s chorus celebrated same-sex attraction between women.

The last paper of the day was from Lucy, a fellow fan of Romosexuality, who introduced us to an amazing mosaic from a villa in Spain. On the one hand it is a stunningly beautiful piece of art. On the other it is obvious that it depicts only people (female and male) whom Zeus is said to have raped, and is intended to imply that the man of the house is just as powerful and rapey as old Thunderbolts himself.

That’s it for day one. More later. And if you think the owner of that Roman villa reminds you of Trump, just wait for the next Roman paper.

A Trip Into The Past

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Today I have been in Southampton. I was there because I needed a university library to do some research, and that’s the only one I can get into easily these days, due to being an alumnus.

So I spent a happy day browsing the stacks for books about Roman eunuchs, and duly found a number of them, which was very useful.

I also got to see how the place had changed in the 35 years or so since I was last there. Parts of it were still very familiar. The library, the student union and the chemistry building are still where they always were, but the bookshop has mysteriously migrated up onto Burgess Road near where the oceanography building used to be. There is also a lot of new build. This has had the effect of diluting the maritime theme of the campus, and I think removing a lot of green space. Still, time can’t stand still. It was good to see the place thriving (and to see a lot more women and non-white students than in my day).

While the day was very useful, it could have been so much better if it were not for the disaster that is academic publishing. No university library takes paper copies of journals these days. They are all online, and you pay for access per student and staff member. There are very strict controls over who can access them, even though they are all “in the library”. Even worse, they don’t seem to buy paper books any more. New books seem to be mostly held only in electronic form and on license. This makes it next to impossible for anyone who isn’t either a member of staff or a student to access anything in an academic library.

Fortunately I can get access to a lot of journals through J-STOR, though I often have to pay for them. Books are more difficult. These days new academic books go for between £80 and £100. I can’t afford that. I’d start to think seriously about Helen Marshall’s MA in science fiction because at least then I’d be a student, except I can’t afford £7k in tuition fees either (or the time to do the course).

Knowledge, we guards it jealously, my precious.

Me On Notches: Serious Trans History

~ Cheryl

In case you were wondering what all of this swanning off to conferences on Assyriology was about, all can now be revealed. I have a post up on Notches, the History of Sexuality blog. It is all about trans people who lived over 4,000 years ago. And yes, I do have evidence. I hope that someone at the British Museum reads it (or indeed reads the email I sent them) and puts the Silimabzuta fragment in the LGBT+ history exhibition they are launching in a couple of weeks.

Anyway, I’m a little bit proud of this (and very grateful to Monica, Sophus, Omar and Alexandra for their help). Hopefully it is written in a very accessible manner so you can all enjoy it. Traffic boosting would be appreciated.

This doesn’t quite count as academic publication, but I’m getting there.

Hirschfeld and Hatshepsut

~ Cheryl

My friend Jen Grove has a post up on Notches, the history of sexuality blog, today. In it she talks about looking for trans people in the ancient world. As her main example she tells us that Magnus Hirschfeld was one of the people who has suggested that the Egyptian Queen, Hatshepsut, might be trans. I’ve said my piece about Hatshepsut before, and I’m pretty sure I have ranted to Jen as well. I’m not surprised that she’s cautious about the identification. When you are looking for trans people from the past it is really important to understand the culture in which they lived, and how that culture understood gender.

For me, of course, it is also important to maintain academic respectability. If I were to make a case for Hatshepsut being trans I would get torn to shreds by my Egyptologist friends. Jen can get away with slightly more because she can’t be accused of projection the way I can, but she still has to play the academic game.

There’s also the fact that claiming feminist icons such as Hatshepsut as trans is a sure fire way to turn feminists against the trans community. Politically it’s not wise.

Mainly, however, I want to echo Jen’s point in the Notches post about not relying on famous people from the past. It’s great that we have a few celebrities to talk about, Elagabalus being the most high profile, but there were very many ordinary people in ancient cultures who lived outside of the gender binary. We don’t need celebrities to make the case. And indeed the case is far more powerful if we can identify lots of ordinary trans people, rather than just a few high profile ones.

Forthcoming Book on Gender & Sexuality in SF&F

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

I am delighted to announce that I will have an essay in Gender identity and sexuality in Current Fantasy and Science Fiction: do we have a problem?, forthcoming from Luna Press later this year. There are 10 authors altogether in the book, the full list being available via that link. You’ll probably know of Juliet McKenna and Kim Lakin-Smith. Finnish friends will also know Jyrki Korpua.

My essay is, of course, on trans representation. It is effectively an update of stuff I have been doing for years now. Juliet’s is about sexism in the publishing/book-selling industry, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing what she has written. I’ll keep you informed when I get news about the book.

Trans Theory in Assyriology

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Some of the talks from the conference I attended in Barcelona in February have been put online. The full playlist is here (including one on Nefertiti, Egypt fans), but I just want to highlight one here because it demonstrates that trans and intersex issues are being taken seriously by academia. It is one of the keynote talks by Ann Guinan who, delightfully, studies Sex and Gender, Magic and Divination in the Ancient World at the University of Pennsylvania. The first half of the talk is basically a history of Western sexology and how it has impacted our view of Mesopotamia. Ann then brings in knowledge of trans and intersex people, and asks how their existence might affect how we interpret the ancient world.

My apologies to intersex readers for the focus on genitalia, but in the ancient world intersex conditions were generally only noticed when they caused a distinct physical change. Everyone else may remember the 2015 BBC program that featured the guevedoce community in the Dominican Republic.

I remember this talk with some pride because I was able to introduce Ann to a friend of mine, Alan Greaves, who studies Classics at Liverpool University. Alan has written about evidence for the existence of intersex people in Rome, of which there is quite a lot (some of which found its way into my LGBT History Month talks this year).

Anyway, here’s the video. It’s about half an hour.

Sexing The Past

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Don’t blame me for that title, it is what the conference I spent the weekend at was called. It was, of course, the annual LGBT History academic conference. This year it took place in Liverpool. I had a great time, despite the ongoing disaster at Lime Street station which caused all sorts of transport issues (and despite the Liverpool rain).

Friday night saw the annual guest lecture, or rather two of them this year. I had seen Diana Souhami’s talk in Exeter, but it was just as good second time around. I was delighted to be able to hear a talk by Bisi Alimi, who has many important things to say about the legacy of colonialism, and says them incredibly eloquently.

For some reason best know to themselves, the conference decided to kick off one track with me talking about queer Romans. The audience wasn’t huge as there were two really good things on at the same time, but those who did listen to me seemed to enjoy what I had to say.

I was followed by Jonah Coman who gave a paper on the weird ways in which mediaeval mystics feminised Christ. The picture below is not the Eye of Sauron, it is Christ’s wound as a vulva. See here if you want to learn more.

Finally in that session we had a great paper from Richard Godbeer who, as well as having an awesome name, is an expert on early American colonists. Through him I learned about Thomas/Thomasine Hall, a genderfluid and probably intersex person who lived in Virgina. We know a lot about them because of a well documented court case in 1629.

The intersex theme continued into the next session where Blake Gutt showed how a mediaeval cleric tried to make sense of the existence of people who seemed to be neither male nor female. Then Kit Heyam treated us to an entertaining tour through mediaeval buggery law. The extreme reluctance of anyone to describe what sodomy or buggery actually was made it very difficult for courts to convict anyone. Kit also noted that pictures of Thomas Aquinas almost always show him looking very depressed. It’s not a good advert for theology.

The rest of the day was given over to panels telling harrowing stories of LGBT+ people in the military and LGBT+ asylum seekers. The British government did not come out of either panel looking good. In fact more accurately it ended up looking petty and vindictive.

I spent Saturday evening in a pub with Leah and Amber Moore and their mum. We were there primarily to listen to Marty O’Reilly, a very good guitarist from Santa Cruz. Leah tells me that the Caledonia puts on live gigs for free most nights. I am seriously impressed.

Of course when Leah and I get together mischief tends to happen. This time we ended up doing Google searches for weird pictures from mediaeval manuscripts, and I discovered the phenomenon of the Hairy Mary Magdalene. The short version is that in the 15th Century artists began to depict Mary Magdalene as covered in fur (apart from her boobs). Apparently the hairiness denoted her beastly (i.e. sexual) nature.

The following morning we had a panel about how we understand sexual and gender identities from past times. This was right up my street and I got to bore people about Foucault for a second time that weekend. The important point to remember is that heterosexuality is a 19th Century invention. Before that the idea that the world is divided into gays and straights would have seemed quite odd.

There was a session of papers by Nordic scholars, of which the most interesting was about attempts in 1984 by the Swedish government to persuade museums to pay more attention to LGBT+ issues.

After lunch there was supposed to be a panel on trans history by Stephen Whittle, but he couldn’t make it so I bullied Kit, Jonah and Blake into taking over the session. (They didn’t need that much bullying, to be honest.) It was a very good discussion, helped by some great audience participation. I’d love to do that again when we have had a bit of time to prepare.

Finally we had a museums and archaeology panel. Sarah Douglas has been doing some great work on gendering graves in Bronze Age Cyprus. Char Keenan has been equally busy filling Liverpool museums with queer content. And Lois Stone had some sage things to say about how archaeologists treat potentially trans burials.

I will entirely understand if much of this seems rather dull to you, but I love doing it and without it I would not be able to present fun public talks like the ones I have been doing in February. I was very pleased that we had at least six trans people attending this event. Hopefully next year there will be more. If you are a trans person with an academic interest in history, please do get in touch. As Blake said very eloquently on Sunday, and I said in my speech at Exeter, trans history is a political necessity in a time when people are actively trying to erase us from the historical record. This is important work.

A Week in Barcelona

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Hello, remember me?

I know, I have been very quiet this past week. That’s because I have been very busy. The conference days were long, partly because we had so much good material, and partly because, this being Barcelona, we allowed 1.5 hours for lunch. The days tended to finish at around 7:00pm, after which we’d go out for a glass or two of wine, and then go for dinner. By the time we were done it was time for bed.

The lack of blogging wasn’t helped by the fact that my hotel was fairly basic. The wifi was good but there was no desk so I tended to just check email then drop offline again. I’m not complaining. The room was clean, comfortable and ideally situated just a few minutes walk from the university. It was also very cheap. That was ideal for somewhere I would be spending very little time in, but needed for sleep.

My final excuse for not blogging more is that much of the material was very esoteric. You folks probably won’t be interested in an in-depth analysis of the names that Babylonians gave their children, a list of all of the known scribes from the Assyrian empire and their functions, or Talmudic deliberations on whether being breastfed made a male baby unclean. However, here are a few things I found out about that may be more amusing.

First up, thanks to Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme for introducing me to the Brick Testament. This is a recreation of the Bible in Lego dioramas. Naturally it reproduces a whole lot of weirdness from the Old Testament, including this explanation of when it is OK to have your son stoned to death and this rather NSFW depiction of male sex workers. It is also a useful reminder of just how many people the Israelite god managed to slaughter during the course of the narrative.

Second, thanks to Amy Gansell for introducing me to the recreation of the royal palace at Nimrud created by Learning Sites, Inc.. This palace was built by Ashurnasirpal II and material from it is available in numerous museums around the world. There is also a 2D walk-through available here via a Firefox plugin.

The video below is a 2D fly-through of the place, but it is also available as a VR experience using Oculus Rift. When Amy first encountered the project there were no women shown at all in the recreation. Thankfully Learning Sites has been willing to work with her to develop a representation of Ashurnasirpal’s queen, Mullissu-mukanniÅ¡at-Ninua and some of her servants.

Since the recreation project was begun, what remains of the actual site at Nimrud has apparently been destroyed by Daesh.

Hola World

~ Cheryl

This is a very quick update from Barcelona. The weather is much better than in England. The food and the wine are great. The University of Barcelona is as beautiful as ever. I am spending much of my time apologizing to young European academics about the awfulness of Brexit. Even the Americans are less embarrassed than me because Trump is a vague and nebulous threat whereas for some of these people, or their friends and colleagues, Brexit means losing your home and possibly being separated from your spouse.

Anyway, the conference is great. I haven’t learned a huge amount, but I have confirmed a few things I was unsure about which thankfully means I don’t have to do any massive re-writes of my talks for LGBT History Month. I’m delighted at the number of people who want to learn about trans theory to help them with their work.

Fiction Meets Science

~ Cheryl

Further to last week’s academic conference on fiction in archaeology, my new pal Anna has sent me a link to the website for the project she is working on. Here’s the headline blurb:

In recent decades, fiction writers have been creating new kinds of stories about science. They are exploring its practices, concepts, people, institutions, products and societal fall-out. What are the literary and social implications of this trend? What does contemporary fiction have to say about the human dimensions of science? Are its practitioners villains or heroes, drones or creative individuals, recluses or team players—stereotypes or multidimensional characters? Is this new wave of thinking about science in fiction leading to new literary forms? What is its role in science communication? Can a novel, film, or play make science more approachable, or inspire curiosity about scientific concepts?

I see that they have a conference planned for Toronto in May, featuring the very wonderful Karen Joy Fowler.

It all looks very interesting.

When Archaeology Meets Fiction

~ Cheryl

I spent today at the Writing Remains conference at Bristol University. It was in the lovely Clifton Hill House, had some great speakers, and came with a free lunch and a wine reception. It was well worth getting up at the crack of dawn for.

I also made a lot of new friends. For example:

Anna from Germany who is part of an international project on science and fiction, her specialism being archaeology. I’m going to feed her a whole pile of science fiction recommendations.

James from Cambridge who gave a great paper on Jack London’s Before Adam and is a champion of Neanderthal rights.

Katy whose paper was titled “Yummy Mummies” and who explained how early mummy tales mainly featured a female mummy and some sort of erotic attachment by the archaeologist. Apparently there was a whole thing about mummy unwrapping as a form of strip tease. Needless to say, this was all related to ideas of the manly Westerners overcoming the mysterious, feminine East.

Joan who is doing a PhD about the pioneering woman SF writer, Jane Webb Loudon. Loudon’s novel, The Mummy!, written when she was 17 and published three years later in 1827, engages directly with the themes of Frankenstein and has some great scientific ideas about the 22nd century. S.J. Chambers has an essay about the book in Clarkesworld (which Joan mentioned).

Kerry who gave a paper about Lovercraft’s story “Under the Pyramids” (which he ghost-wrote for Houdini and stars the great escapologist). He’s doing a PhD on archaeology in weird fiction.

Shari from Melbourne who introduced us to the sad story of the Inca children who not only gave their lives for their community, but had to walk vast distances and climb a volcano to get to the place where they would be sacrificed.

Ellie who gave a paper on Bram Stoker’s novel, The Jewel of Seven Stars, which involves a mummy, some Golden Dawn type magic and a whole of lot Egyptmania-in-London material. She’s just finished a PhD studying with Roger Luckhurst

All of this was organized by the fabulous Josie Gill whose Literary Archaeology project I may have mentioned before.

By this point all of you are doubtless very jealous, especially those of you based in Bristol whom I shamefully neglected to tell about this because I didn’t get the program until earlier this week and been crazy busy, but sorry anyway (especially to you, Alistair). However, on the way back to Temple Meads Anna mentioned that she would be back in Bristol in April for the annual conference of the British Society for Literature and Science. It looks fairly cheap to attend, and Anna tells em that they are interested in science fiction as well as non-fiction writing about science. I’ll know more once Anna gets home to Oldenburg and we have exchanged a few emails.

February On The Road

~ Cheryl

My dance card is looking pretty much full for February already. It is going to be a very busy month. Here’s some of the events you’ll be able to find me at.

At the beginning of the month I’ll be spending a few days in Barcelona hanging out with people doing cutting edge research into gender in the ancient near east. Here’s the conference program. It looks awesome.

I’ll be spending the weekend of Feb. 11th/12th in Exeter at their LGBT History Festival. I am one of the speakers at the launch event on the Saturday at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, and I’m also giving a talk at the Phoenix on the Sunday. The Saturday talk will be something about the importance of history in trans activism, and the Sunday one is on Trans Women in the Ancient World, which will focus mainly on Mesopotamia and Rome.

On Wednesday 15th I’ll be on the radio talking about some of the things happening in Bristol to mark LGBT History Month. Fingers crossed I’ll have a studio full of guests.

On Saturday 18th I will be in Bournemounth of their LGBT History Festival, and will once again be giving the Trans Women in the Ancient World talk. I’m delighted to see that Bournemouth’s soccer team (who are currently in the Premiership) is one of the sponsors of that event.

On Saturday 25th I will be at the Watershed in Bristol as part of the Art & Us event being staged by Bristol Pride. I’ll giving a talk titled Images of Transgender People in Art Down the Ages, which will cover 4500 years of trans history.

And because there’s just too much happening in February, and not very many days, the academic conference has slipped into March. On the first weekend I will be in Liverpool for the Sexing the Past conference where I will be giving a paper on Gender and Citizenship in Ancient Rome.

So if you want me to do something for you in February I’m likely to have to say no. Hopefully it will be obvious why.

Travel Planning

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

If you have asked me about my availability recently I have probably said something along the lines of, “not in February, please”. That’s LGBT History Month, and that tends to mean a lot of travel. Today I have been doing some booking. Here’s what it looks like.

Jan 31 – Feb 4 I shall be in Barcelona for a conference at the university on gender in the ancient near east. That will feed directly into my presentations as part of the official LGBT History Month events.

Feb 11-12 I am in Exeter where I am speaking both at the launch event on the Saturday and on the festival day on the Sunday.

Feb 15 I have marked in as the Ujima show devoted to LGBTHM.

Feb 18 I am in Bournemouth doing the same trans people in the ancient world talk that I gave in Exeter on the 12th.

There will probably be some stuff going on in Bristol. I know M-Shed will be busy on the 18th, and on the 22nd. I have the 25th reserved in my diary for a possible talk on trans people in art down the ages.

Mar 3-5 I am in Liverpool for the LGBTHM academic conference.

And that is why (Ceri, Adele) I will not be going to London on Mar 10-12 for the Women of the World conference. I will be asleep that weekend.

Being Trans is not “Dressing Up”

~ Cheryl

There are a lot of interesting academic conferences around at the moment. More than I have the time and money to go to. One that I have been looking at with interest is the Fantastika Conference. It is, after all, named after a term coined by John Clute. Last year it clashed with Finncon, so I couldn’t go. This year, of course, there is no Finncon because of the Worldcon in Helsinki. Fantastika is at the start of July again. I’ve just taken a look at the Call for Papers and… oh dear, oh my.

The theme of the conference is “Performing Fantastika”, which is a good thing to do. Some of the things that they want papers on are perfectly sensible. For example:

  • theatrical or staged performances
  • performance in films and televisuals
  • audience performance of the text through cosplay or fan fiction
  • costuming, weapons, and other accoutrements to performance

Even “gender performativity” is an OK thing to talk about. After all, drag exists. But then we have these:

  • the gendered body or the transgendered body
  • disabled bodies

Look, I’m sorry. I’m sure it is all very fascinating for academics. But being trans is not a “performance”. Neither is being disabled. Suggesting that they are is a very good way to have the Internet fall on your head.

Try to do better, people, please?

Bristol Festival of Literature Events

~ Cheryl

The full publicity for my two events at the Bristol Festival of Literature is now out.

The “Stories of Strong Women” panel only exists as a Facebook event. You can find that here. Apparently we have 85 people going already, which is awesome.

I have created an EventBrite event for “Ageing in the LGBT Community”, which you can find here. I’m hoping we’ll get good attendance from people who work with the elderly, both via the NHS and the voluntary sector. I certainly got interest when I mentioned it at some of the trans awareness courses I have been doing.

While I’m here I would also like to highlight the Annual General Meeting of OutStories Bristol (of which I am co-chair). This year Bristol University has kindly provided us with a beautiful venue, and we are lucky enough to have the brilliant Dr. Jana Funke of Exeter University to come and talk to us about her research into the archives of Radclyffe Hall. Jana is a great speaker. She did a short version of this for me in February as part of the LGBT History Festival. She’s got twice as long this time. I’m looking forward to it.

Helsinki Worldcon Academic Track – Call for Papers

~ Cheryl

Finnish conventions always have a great academic presence, and their Worldcon promises to be no different. I have just been sent the Call for Papers for Worldcon 75. The theme of the track will be “100 Years of Estrangement”. The deadline for submitting abstracts is October 31st.

As it happens, I know exactly what I am going to submit. It is a paper called “Genly Ai and the Trans Panic Defense”. I have been meaning to write it for some time now, and this is a perfect opportunity.

YA and Gender Conference, Italy 2017

~ Cheryl

Hello academic pals. Here is a conference that you may be interested in. It is called Literature, Translation, and Mediation by and for Children: Gender, Diversity, and Stereotype, and it will take place at the University of Bologna at Forlì in October 2017. That’s a fair way off, but abstracts have to be in by January 31st so you don’t as much time as it seems.

You may be asking why I am recommending this. Well, obviously the subject matter is of interest. But in addition one of the organizers of the conference is Dr. Raffaella Baccolini who was the scholar Guest of Honor at Finncon this year. She’s very smart, and a lovely person. I’m sure she’ll put on a great conference.

Also, there’s the location. Forlì is not actually in Bologna. It is a little way south-east thereof. It is actually closer to Ravenna than Bologna, and if I am going to be in the area there’s no way I am not going to see those mosaics and to pay my respects to Theodora. About half way between Bologna and Forlì there’s a little town called Imola, which is home to the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari, one time home of the San Marino Grand Prix. And of course San Marino itself is just a little further along the main road from Forlì.

Actually, to be frank, if I’m going to Italy then I have to go to Rome too because there are things in the Capitoline Museum that I need to see. I would love to go to Pompeii as well, but I don’t know how far the budget will stretch.

Anyway, it sounds like an amazing opportunity, and I shall certainly be submitting a paper. Hopefully some of you folks will be interested in going too. I don’t want to have to consume all of that great Italian food and wine by myself.

You can find the Call for Papers here.