Queering Desire: Book Launch with Queer@King's

Queer@King's is proud to host the book launch of Queering Desire: Lesbians, Gender and Subjectivity (Routledge, 2024), a new edited volume by Róisín Ryan-Flood and Amy Tooth Murphy. Taking an intersectional feminist approach and incorporating new and established identities such as non-binary, masculine of centre (MOC), butch and femme, this collection examines how the changing landscape for gender and sexual identities impacts on queer culture in productive and transformative ways. Within queer studies, explorations of desire, longing and eroticism have often neglected AFAB, transfeminine and non-binary people’s experiences. Queering Desire advances our understanding of contemporary lesbian and queer desire from an inclusive perspective that is supportive of trans and non-binary identities. 

This event will feature presentations from 4 Queering Desire contributors and a Q&A session. We will conclude with a wine reception.

Programme

18:00 Welcome and introduction (Zeena Feldman, King's College London)

18:05 Queer Lineage: On generational sexualities, LGBTQ identity and visibility (Róisín Ryan-Flood, University of Essex)

18:15 Increased Lesbian Visibility and its Discontents: Comparing the coming out stories of women and nonbinary people across generations(Ella Ben Hagai, University of California, Berkeley)

18:25 The butch on the ferry: The affect and effect of butch longing (Amy Tooth Murphy, Royal Holloway)

18:35 My Own Private Non-Binary Body (Libro Levi Bridgeman, Hotpencil Press)

18:50 Q&A

19:00 Wine reception

Speaker bios:

Róisín Ryan-Flood is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Intimate and Sexual Citizenship (CISC) at the University of Essex. Her research interests include gender, sexuality, kinship, digital intimacies, and feminist epistemology. She is the author of Lesbian Motherhood: Gender, Sexuality and Citizenship (2009), and co-editor of numerous books, including Secrecy and Silence in the Research Process (2010), Transnationalising Reproduction: Third Party Conception in a Globalised World (2018), Difficult Conversations: A Feminist Dialogue (2023), and Consent: Gender, Power and Subjectivity (2023). She is also co-editor of the journal Sexualities: Studies in Culture and Society.

Ella Ben Hagai was trained in Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is an associate professor at California State University, Fullerton, and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Lesbian Studies. Her research broadly focuses on processes that lead individuals from different social groups to develop solidarity and coalition consciousness. Recent theoretical publications explore intersections between queer and trans* thought and psychological research. Her recent book, Queer Theory and Psychology: Gender, Sexuality, and Transgender Identities is the recipient of the American Psychological Association Division 44 Distinguished Book Award and the Association of Women in Psychology Distinguished Publication Award.

Amy Tooth Murphy is Senior Lecturer in Oral History at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she specialises in queer oral history. Her research interests include butch/femme identities and culture, post-war lesbian history and literature, queer oral history theory and method, and queer temporalities. She is a Founder and Co-editor of the peer-reviewed blog, Notches: (re)marks on the history of sexuality and a Trustee of the Oral History Society. Her current British Academy/Leverhulme-funded project, ‘Historicising Butch: Narrating Butch Lesbian Identity, 1950-Present’, is an examination of butch lived experience in the UK and US via oral history interviews. She is co-editor of a special issue of Oral History on ‘LGBTQ+ Lives: History, Identity and Belonging’ (2020) and co-editor of New Directions in Queer Oral History: Archives of Desire (2022).

Libro Levi Bridgeman is a writer, lecturer and editor. They have a PhD from UEA in Creative & Critical Writing where they were awarded the HSC Scholarship. Their theatre credits include The Butch Monologues (2013-present day). They have also published short stories, including ‘Letter To My Future Lover’ (F, M and Other), ‘XXX’ (Queer Life, Queer Love) and ‘For Ezra’ (Queer Life, Queer Love 2). Their screenplay, Parker Parker (2022), has been optioned by Creators Inc. In 2023, their documentary, Private View, with the portrait painter, Sadie Lee, was released. Libro Levi co-founded Hotpencil Press with Serge Nicholson in 2011.

Zeena Feldman is Director of Queer@King's and Senior Lecturer in Digital Culture in the Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London. Her research considers how digital communication technologies impact understandings and performances of traditionally analogue concepts – for instance, belonging, identity and wellbeing. She has published widely, including anthologies with Routledge and IB Tauris/Bloomsbury and in Information, Communication & Society; the European Journal of Cultural Studies; Feminist Media Studies; Celebrity Studies; TripleC; and Cultural Policy, Criticism & Management Research.