This year’s Sexuality Summer School (SSS) once again saw 40 postgraduates from across the UK and well beyond attend the University of Manchester for a week-long series of events combining seminars, lectures, and workshops alongside a public events programme in collaboration with arts organisations and venues across Manchester.
The theme of Queer Friendship and Other Intimacies explored how new forms of friendship, kinship, activism and collaboration have been invented in queer, feminist and trans lives and politics; we examined how these have generated new bonds and attachments – as well as conflicts and divisions – and traced their emergence in activist and mutual aid networks, both in the past and in response to today’s ‘care crisis’.
The SSS attracted postgraduate students from Manchester, as well as students from across the length and breadth of the UK: from institutions in Sussex, Birmingham, Durham, London, Lancaster, Liverpool, York, Essex, as well as Australia, Denmark, Russia, and Germany.
These delegates represented a diverse range of disciplines and multidisciplinary research projects, including Art History, Creative Writing, Education, English and Comparative Literature, Film and Television Studies, Graphic Design, Linguistics, Media and Cultural Studies, Medieval and Modern Languages, Music, Political Science, and Sociology.
Funding from the Social Responsibility Fund contributed to a number of public events in this year’s programme. These included the launch of Jason Okundaye’s book, Revolutionary Acts: Love and Brotherhood in Black Gay Britain (Faber, 2024) at Blackwell’s Bookshop. The sold-out event was attended by 80 people. It featured a reading from the book, followed by a lively discussion, bringing together diverse perspectives from students, scholars, artists, activists and members of the public. This event foregrounded the importance of thinking about queer friendship at the intersection of gender, sexuality, race and class. Jason returned the following day to deliver a workshop for SSS delegates, allowing for a deeper engagement with the theoretical and methodological questions raised by his book. One delegate said: ‘This was an incredible talk. It completely changed the way I think about oral history.’ Another said, addressing Jason: ‘ Thank you for reminding me why I am doing the research I am. It is easy to lose the joy in a PhD, but your book helped me remember that the stories I’m telling are urgent and matter’.
We also hosted a live performance of The Last Show Before We Die – the latest play by the queer performance duo Hotter Project. The sold-out show was performed in the community space at the Queer Lit bookshop in Ancoats. Holding the event at this venue allowed us to connect with the wider LGBTQIA+ community in Manchester, as well as enabling us to model for our delegates and other audience members how performances can support public engagement and cultural partnerships. One audience member said: ‘I will remember the experience forever!’. Another said: ‘I think this was one of the highlights of the summer school for me. It was really moving to see this creative and thoughtful exploration of friendship – I’ve been thinking about it all week!’.
SSS Organising team:
Prof Jackie Stacey, Tasha Pick (PhD student), Dr Millie Lovelock, Dr Eleanor Green