Sexuality meetings & conferences

Classifying Sex: Debating DSM-5

Thursday, 4 July 2013 to Friday, 5 July 2013 Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

This conference brings together social and political scientists, feminist scholars, sexologists, psychiatrists, historians of science, as well as mental health practitioners and sexual rights activists to critically explore the sexual classifications produced by the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published in May 2013. The DSM is the standard reference for the classification of mental disorders, and its first major revision since 1994 is consequently an important global event. The conference will explore which categories of ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’, ‘healthy’ and ‘pathological’ sexualities and identities the new manual produces, and critically scrutinise their consequences for diagnostic practices as well as their wider social and political implications. The conference will take place on 4 and 5 July 2013 at the interdisciplinary Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) of the University of Cambridge. It is financially supported by CRASSH, the Wellcome Trust, the Sexual Divisions Study Group of the British Sociological Association, the French Institute, Northumbria University, the Laboratoire de Sociologie of the University of Lausanne, and The Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES).

1st International Conference on LGBT Psychology and Related Fields – Coming Out for LGBT Psychology in the Current International Scenario

June 20th to 22nd 2013 Lisbon, Portugal

The1st International Conference on LGBT Psychology and related fields – Coming out for LGBT Psychology in the current international scenario will be held in Lisbon, Portugal, from June 20th to 22nd 2013. This Conference will be a unique opportunity to create a forum for students, researchers and scholars interested in different areas of LGBT research to discuss current topics, so to bridge the gap between LGBT research and the community realities in which LGBT people live in.

The main objective of this Conference is to give visibility to LGBT Research, with particular emphasis on LGBT Psychology, thus providing a significant contribution to a civic, socially conscientious and sustainable development in the current international scenario that respects sexual diversity.

For questions about registration please email aruivo.lisboa@abreu.pt

Crimes of Passion: Representing Sexual Pathology in the Early 20th Century

Conference dates: 24-26 July 2013, Münster, Germany

The discourse on sexual pathology claimed a central position in modern European culture almost as quickly as it began to establish itself as a scientific discipline. The bonds between science and culture seem all the more visible when it comes to the science of sexual deviance, as many sexual scientists were quick to point out in their works.

Without empirical or statistical material at hand, the scientists turned to other sources of knowledge in order to legitimize and systematize sexual pathology. Their earliest case studies came from literature. Indeed, certain authors found themselves under examination, as sexual themes in their books were treated as evidence of pathological fantasies. These literary perversions became the basis for sexual pathologists’ scientific interpretations and psychological analyses. As part of the formation and development of the discipline, the connection between sex and crime also played a central role in the scandals, injustices, and power struggles associated with sexual pathology in the early 20th century.

The popular reception of works by Richard Krafft-Ebing, Magnus Hirschfeld, or Erich Wulffen, in addition to their contested scientific reception, attest to a wide interest in social deviation with sexual deviants being just one particularly scandalous branch of alterity. Indeed, deviation is the Other to that which is socially accepted, legitimate, and institutionalized. Social deviance by definition breaks course from what is construed as “normal.” The deviant breaks with the social order and, depending on the particular historical and political configuration, might be dealt with as a criminal. The debate surrounding Paragraph 175 of the German penal code that made sexual relations between people of the same sex illegal highlights the virulent history of how sexual deviance and crime were yoked together. Paragraph 175—enacted in the 19th century, but which was not completely repealed until 1994—brought certain sexual relations with their own specific social and cultural sanctions into the juridical realm of penal codes and state regulation. A significant part of this new institutionalization of sexual deviance (both academically and in terms of the law) involved thematizing gender roles, especially questions of “the female.” The pathologization of femininity was famously and scandalously presented by Otto Weininger in his Geschlecht und Charakter, a work that marks another controversial episode in the history of sexual pathology and modernism.

The conference Crimes of Passion focuses on the triad of sexuality, criminology and literature during the early decades of the 20th century.

Infertility in History, Science and Culture

4 July 2013 - 5 July 2013 University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

This symposium will explore the history of infertility, and the place of infertility in science and culture. Our primary focus is historical, but we welcome contributions from scholars in different disciplines and employing a range of approaches – social scientific, literary, feminist, psychological, and legal. We aim to bring together researchers working on this fascinating and under-explored field in order to better understand historical and contemporary representations and experiences of infertility across different cultures and from different perspectives.

Organiser(s): Gayle Davis (University of Edinburgh) and Tracey Loughran (Cardiff University)

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

the role of gender, class and race in shaping experiences and representations of infertility;
individual, familial, and social contexts of infertility;
infertility as a bodily and/or psychological experience;
heterosexuality, homosexuality, and involuntary childlessness;
reproductive science and access to reproductive technologies;
the interplay of medical, scientific, and cultural understandings of infertility;
the role of politics, law, and religion in shaping experiences of and attitudes towards infertility;
changing experiences of infertility across time and space, including comparative histories;
the relation of perceptions of infertility to beliefs about fertility control, the constitution and social role of the family, and sexuality;
different disciplinary approaches to infertility.

An edited collection based on the presented papers is planned.

The symposium is co-convened by Gayle Davis (University of Edinburgh) and Tracey Loughran (Cardiff University). It will be held at the University of Edinburgh on 4-5 July 2013.

Registration deadline: 30 April 2013

Contact details
Tracey Loughran
LoughranTL@cardiff.ac.uk