"How to be Gay", a lecture by David M. Halperin, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Department: Culture and Theory
Date and Time: April 1, 2010 | 12:00 PM-2:00 PMEvent Location: 135 Humanities Instructional Building
Event Details
The PhD Program in Culture and Theory Presents
“How to Be Gay”
a lecture by
David M. Halperin
W. H. Auden Collegiate Professor
of the History and Theory of Sexuality
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
What's the relation between male homosexuality as a sexual practice and male homosexuality as a cultural practice? What explains the cultural object-choices of gay men? What can we find out about gay male subjectivity by studying gay men's cultural preferences instead of their sexual preferences? And what are the sexual meanings of specific cultural forms? That is the topic of David Halperin's new book, How to Be Gay. In this lecture, he will present a few insights from it.
Noon-2 PM
Thursday, April 1, 2010
HIB 135
David Halperin is one of the leading figures in LGBT Studies. Since the publication of One Hundred Years of Homosexuality and Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography in the 1990s, he has helped to shape the field with his provocative books and edited collections and with GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, which he co-founded and co-edited for many years. Halperin’s What Do Gay Men Want? An Essay on Sex, Risk, and Subjectivity (2007) led to his recent work as a consultant to the Centers for Disease Control and the San Francisco Department of Public Health. The 2009 anthology Gay Shame (co-edited with Valerie Traub) emerged from a controversial conference he co-organized at the University of Michigan. A theorist and critic deeply engaged with activism (both within and outside of the academy), Halperin has woven his remarkably diverse areas of expertise—classical studies and its relation to contemporary cultural history; gay men's cultural practices and subjectivity; the history and theory of homosexuality; HIV/AIDS—into a singular body of work.
The PhD Program in Culture and Theory thanks the Critical Theory Emphasis and the Department of Women’s Studies for their generous co-sponsorship of this event. This event is free and open to the public. Please join us.