‘Queer Now and Then’ Seminar Series, University of Manchester
Earlier this year, newspapers and other media reported the founding of a new scholarly journal, Porn Studies—setting off, predictably, a flurry of responses ranging from interest to outrage by way of derision. Pornography has always been a legal, ethical and political battlefield, and looks likely to remain so. But what is ‘pornography’? And what is its history? The word itself was coined in the nineteenth century; but what of earlier periods? Can we speak of medieval or early modern pornography? And what is at stake in our decision to do (or not to do) so? Join Hal Gladfelder, David Matthews and Kaye Mitchell for a roundtable on the complex, troubled history of a word, and the debates provoked by the bawdy, erotic, and obscene from the middle ages to the present.
For further details, please see http://queerculturenetwork.wordpress.com/ or alternatively, contact Rosemary Deller (rosemary.deller@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk).
Mark Carrigan 