Queer Beyond London is delighted to highlight exciting research and projects exploring queer local histories that will be featured in our upcoming Queer Localities international conference from 30 November – 1 December 2017.
Gareth Longstaff
Queer movements, shifts and dialogues that have occurred between identities and representations allied to the North-East (with a central focus on Newcastle upon Tyne) and London form a complex set of discursive, symbolic, and ideological fault-lines. Queer subjects have often moved (and continue to move) from the North-East to London and then back again to create identities and identifications that are simultaneously fixed and liminal. This paper argues that whilst these are often understood through the dominant markers of social class, sexuality, and gender, and an interplay of economic, social and cultural capital they also form new spaces for the negation and negotiation of these markers.
Investigating how physical and mediated movements of LGBTQ subjects between London and the North-East has evolved since the 1980s it will examine several key examples to do so. Instances such as the TV output of Out and Out on Tuesday (Channel 4 1989-1994), the regional politics and meanings allied to drag and the drag queen, and the local / national discourses associated with Pride Celebrations will inform this. By examining how these exchanges between Newcastle upon Tyne and London have been constructed the paper will also unpack the tensions which ambiguously subvert and reinforce issues such as hetero and homo-normativity, misogyny, commodification and desire. This paper forms part of a research project being led by Gareth Longstaff that sets out to consider how queer media, representation / self-representation and social change in London and the North-East have influenced one another. It is also allied to archival work that has recently been carried out and is working towards the creation of an LGBTQ archive of the North-East.
Gareth Longstaff is a lecturer in media and cultural studies at Newcastle University. Both his teaching and research interests are primarily concerned with queer sexuality, discourses of self-representation, pornography and celebrity. Gareth works at the intersection of how these are connected to other dimensions of queer, cultural, philosophical, mediated and social life.
Queer Localities: a two-day international conference
Birkbeck, University of London
30 November – 1 December 2017
Free and open to all, but please REGISTER your place here
Click here to view the Conference Programme.