50 years of queer identity and culture

What have the last 50 years meant for LGBTQ studies and culture? Non-binary interdisciplinary artist Jacob V Joyce, Mandy Merck, Royal Holloway and James Agar, UCL, discuss the rise of queer theory, its expressions in culture and film, and the social and personal structures it challenges.

James Agar is Lecturer in French & Comparative Literature, UCL (University College London). He currently lectures on HIV/AIDS in France and literary theory, especially the work of Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes, as well as on gay studies and queer theory, looking at the interactions between cultural expression/representation and sexual politics. James researches in these areas and has published academic articles on constructions of masculinity, HIV/AIDS in France, the work of Michel Foucault, Hervé Guibert, Adam Mars Jones, Cyril Collard, and the films of Gaël Morel.

Mandy Merck is Professor of Media Arts, Royal Holloway, University of London. Her books relevant to this event include: Perversions: Deviant Readings (Virago), In Your Face: Nine Sexual Studies (NYU Press), and Further Adventures of the Dialectic of Sex (Palgrave Macmillan). Her next book is The Melodrama of Celebrity: Personal Worth and Public Attention.

Jacob V Joyce is a non binary interdisciplinary artist that disrupts commercial and community spaces with queer and anti colonial, creative interventions. As a zine maker, a member of sorryyoufeeluncomfortable collective and the front person for the band Screaming Toenail, Joyce's work brings satirical and theatrical critiques to institutional and every day instances of marginalisation.

Enjoy food and drink purchased from the Knowledge Centre Bar from 18.00 and after the event until the Bar closes at 22.00. 

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