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Full details for our workshop, How to do the history of Sex, are now live at https://www.crusev.ed.ac.uk/how-to-do-the-history-of-sex/

26 May, Edinburgh College of Art, Free

Image by Benny Nemerofsky Ramsey

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Agnieszka Kościańska - Glasgow Talk, 19/4 -  '‘Becoming a Homosexual.’ Medicine and Sexual Identities during the Long 1970s in State Socialist Poland'

Agnieszka Kościańska, University of Warsaw: '‘Becoming a Homosexual.’ Medicine and Sexual Identities during the Long 1970s in State Socialist Poland'

Wednesday 19 April, 3.30-5.00, University of Glasgow, room 711, Adam Smith Building Chair: Francesca Stella

In this talk, I will trace the role of expert (mostly medical) discourses in the construction of sexual identities in Poland in the 1970s. I will focus on expert discourses on homosexuality and transsexuality in professional and popular periodicals and books from the era. I have conducted archival research (4 popular journals and major sexological academic publications from the 1970s), interviews with sexologists active in the 1970s as well as with LGBT persons growing up in this decade. In my analysis, I will reconstruct the dialogue between sexologists and their patients. In so doing I will highlight the tension between the prevalent medicalization of sexual ‘others’ and a humanistic approach, which prompted some experts to empathize with their queer clients and to modify their scientific outlook (my earlier research on Polish sexology showed its humanistic, holistic and patient-oriented approach). I will also discuss how medical literature as well as medical and therapeutic practices were perceived by homosexuals and transsexuals during this time. Finally, I will reflect on the specificity of the Polish situation in the 1970s. My research points to significant changes, which occurred during the course of the 1970s, such as de-medicalization and liberalization. As a result of these changes, sexologists became important actors who voiced the concerns of their queer patients. However, the nature of these changes in state socialist Poland seems to be significantly different than in Western Europe.

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Accessibility for Between the Sheets

Information on Accessibility for our symposium, Between the Sheets: Radical Print Cultures before the queer bookshop. Thursday 23th and Friday 24th February 2017 Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow

The symposium will be conducted in English.

Live subtitling (speech to text transcription) will accompany both days of the symposium.

On the Thursday, pre-prepared material will be accompanied by closed caption subtitles or a transcript.

Access information regarding the venue

The CCA is wheelchair accessible, with level access throughout each of the floors in the building. The building comprises three floors and is situated on the corner of Sauchiehall Street and Scott Street. The ground floor includes a foyer with a box office, Duty Managers' office, two shops, a cafe bar, gallery, cinema, accessible toilets and lift access to the first and second floors. The first floor has the theatre, Creative Lab, accessible toilets and Terrace Bar. The second floor has Intermedia Gallery and the Clubroom meeting space.

Thursday’s event will be held in the Creative Lab. Friday’s event will be held in the Club Room, with drinks afterwards taking place in the Terrace Bar. 

Please note that there is no hearing loop in the Club Room.

Detailed access information for the CCA be found online here at the CCA’s website. A map of the CCA can viewed here. For a detailed statement that includes information regarding travelling to the venue, click here.

The CCA aim’s to make its building as accessible as possible. If you feel that you might need some additional help, please get in touch or ask a member of staff on arrival.

If you have any specific access requirements that the Cruising the 70s team can help you with, let us know. You can email us at crusev@ed.ac.uk

We will circulate accessibility information including maps of the venue and fixtures and fittings of the spaces we’ll be using and toilets, with general information about the symposium. We will not be providing BSL interpretation at the event.

Cruising the 70s welcomes any suggestions or improvements to access for our events. Feel free to speak to us at the event, or contact us via email at crusev@ed.ac.uk with any suggestions. We will be discussing provisions to improve the accessibility of our events across the duration of the project and in the run up to our conference in Edinburgh in July 2019.

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Programme for Between the Sheets: Radical print cultures before the queer bookshop

Here's the programme for our forthcoming symposium! Tickets have now sold out but those without a space can join a waiting list by calling CCA Glasgow. Accessibility information to follow shortly!

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Between the Sheets: Radical print cultures before the queer bookshop, 23-24 February 2017 CCA Glasgow

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Thursday 23 February, 18.00-20.00, Creative Lab Bob Orr and Sigrid Nielsen in conversation with James Ley

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Friday 24 February 2017, 11am-17.30, Club Room

11.00 Introduction: Fiona Anderson and Laura Guy 11.30-13.00 Roz Kaveney in conversation with Nat Raha 13.00-14.00 Lunch (not provided) 14.00-15.30 Evan Ifekoya in conversation with Nazmia Jamal 15.30-16.30 Break and 'À Propos Unmarked, Brown Paper Packaging: A book-wrapping action' by Mark Clintberg & Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay (with refreshments provided) 16.45-17.30 Discussion

Symposium participants are then invited to join us in the upstairs bar

http://cca-glasgow.com/programme/cruising-the-1970s-between-the-sheets

(Image: Lavender Menace bookshop courtesy of Bob Orr)

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LGBT History Month Event, 9 Feb, University of Edinburgh

Want to find out more about the Cruising the 1970s project? Why not come along to our LGBT History Month event? Cruising the 70s team members Glyn Davis, Fiona Anderson, Laura Guy and Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay will introduce the project, talk about plans, and share some research that has already been done. The event is free. All welcome! Refreshments will be provided.

Venue: Evolution House Boardroom, 5th Floor, Edinburgh College of Art at the University of Edinburgh - 78 West Port, Edinburgh, EH1 2LE.

Time and date: 5pm, Thursday 9 February 2017.

Any queries, drop us a line: crusev@ed.ac.uk. You can also find us on Twitter @cruisingthe70s

Image: Cover of Scottish Minorities Group (c.1973) Some of Your Best Friends Are Homosexual.

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Scottish Minorities Group, meeting weekly in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdeen in the Summer of 1972. Edinburgh and Glasgow Women’s Groups also meeting regularly.

In a basement beneath the university dances gay and lesbian liberation

From Gay News (1 June 1972), via the Gay News Archive.

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Tickets are available for our symposium ‘Between the Sheets: Radical print cultures before the queer bookshop’ from the CCA in Glasgow. They are free! Click on the link about the image. The symposium takes place across 23 - 24 February 2017.

A full programme and information regarding accessibility will be published shortly. We are planning to provide British Sign Language interpretation for the event. If this would make the event more accessible to you, please contact us at crusev@ed.ac.uk, so that we can ensure particular sessions are signed.

Image: Lavender Menace Bookshop, Edinburgh. Courtesy of Bob Orr.

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Gay Liberation Front - 1970

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Socialist Workers Party, London, 1979.

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The greenhouse/bedroom in Derek Jarman’s Bankside studio, early 1970s.

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Four Films by Jim Hubbard. London, Cinema Museum, Friday 9th December

Four Films by Jim Hubbard Friday 9th December 2016 8pm The Cinema Museum, London (2 Dugard Way, SE11 4TH)

Jim Hubbard has been making experimental films that explore lesbian and gay activism and community-building since the mid-1970s. In 1987, he co-founded MIX NYC, the New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival with the writer and activist Sarah Schulman, and in 2012 he directed and co-produced the documentary United in Anger: A History of ACT UP (2012). Hubbard and Schulman also coordinate the ACT UP Oral History Project, a collection of interviews with surviving members of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, New York. For this rare UK screening, Hubbard will show four short films that were shot in the 1970s and 1980s, and that deal with themes of loss, memory, activism, and empowerment: Stop the Movie (Cruising) (1980), Two Marches (1991), Elegy in the Streets (1989), and Speak for Yourself (1990). The filmmaker will be present for an audience Q&A after the screening. Tickets are available for £4 (£3 concessions) here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/four-films-by-jim-hubbard-screening-and-director-qa-tickets-28908376733 Header image: Still from Stop the Movie (Cruising) (1980) Organisers: This screening has been co-organised by the EUROPACH (Disentangling European HIV/AIDS Policies: Activism, Citizenship and Health) and CRUSEV (Cruising the Seventies: Unearthing Pre-HIV/AIDS Sexual Cultures) research initiatives. 

Access: The Cinema Museum is fully accessible to wheelchair users.

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Between the Sheets: Radical print cultures before the queer bookshop

We're incredibly excited to announce:

Between the Sheets: Radical print cultures before the queer bookshop

Thursday 23 - Friday 24 February 2017 Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow

The 1970s was a crucial time for feminist and LGBTQ activism and community-building. Between the Sheets explores how and why reading and writing acquired such prominence and power in queer communities in Britain in this important decade, engaging with the pleasure and politics of print before the establishment of important queer bookshops like Lavender Menace and Gay’s the Word in the late 1970s and early 1980s. With contributions from artists, activists, writers, and academics, it will stop to consider tactile encounters with the printed word, reflect on collective interactions with print in reading groups and consciousness-raising sessions, and think about the development of spaces for sharing and selling books, magazines, and pamphlets in the 1970s, from women’s centres to nightclubs.

Between the Sheets is framed around three conversations with a range of speakers who will share their experiences with print cultures in the 1970s, focusing on the politics of print, on spaces of distribution and connection, and on how these often ephemeral queer print cultures have been archived and are remembered in the present. These discussions will be punctuated by performances and screenings. Looking at reading and sharing the written word as a call to action, Between the Sheets asks what the role of print was for queer communities in the 1970s and what the significance of these radical queer print cultures is for LGBTQ activists today.  

The event is free to attend and ticketed. Tickets will be available soon. The event will take place across Thursday evening and Friday daytime. A full programme and information regarding accessibility will be published shortly.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us via email at crusev@ed.ac.uk

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Andreas Sterzing, The Ward Line Pier, 1983.

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Grace Jones, Fame (1978).

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Gary Needham, ‘Cruising the Archive’. Talk delivered as part of ‘How to do the History of the 1970s’ symposium at Edinburgh College of Art, 28 May 2015. Listen here.