Centre for Women's Studies
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- 2020
- It Changes How You Feel About Yourself to Have This History": Making Adventures in Time and Gender
It Changes How You Feel About Yourself to Have This History": Making Adventures in Time and Gender
Wednesday 2 June 2021, 5.00PM
Speaker(s): Dr. Jana Funke
In this talk, Prof. Jana Funke will reflect on her experiences as a queer literary scholar and historical researcher who has been involved in leading collaborative LGBTQ+-focused public engagement and impact initiatives for almost a decade. She will focus specifically on her role as one of the co-directors of the Transformations project (2019-2020), which resulted in Adventures in Time and Gender, a three-part podcast series about trans and queer history written by Jason Barker, directed by Krishna Istha and performed and produced by an all-trans and non-binary cast and crew. The podcast was co-produced with input from young trans and gender diverse people who were recruited via the charity Gendered Intelligence. The young people engaged creatively and critically with historical and literary sources to shape the final podcast. This talk will explore what this project has taught Prof. Funke about using her research on histories of Western sexology and literary modernism in creative ways within a collaborative project. The talk will be followed by an informal Q&A session. This will be an opportunity to ask questions about collaboration, funding, engagement, co-production and the so-called 'impact agenda', and to workshop any ideas that students and staff might have for future projects of their own.
Feel free to explore the Adventures in Time and Gender website at and listen to one or more of the podcast episodes before the talk.
Prof. Jana Funke is Associate Professor of English and Sexuality Studies at the University of Exeter. Her research focuses on modernist literature and culture, the history of sexuality, sexual science and medicine, and feminist studies and queer theory. She is currently completing three monographs: Sexological Modernism: Queer Feminism and Sexual Science (Edinburgh University Press, 2022), Sexperts: A History of Sexology (Reaktion Press, 2022) and a book on the interdisciplinary history of sexology jointly authored with Professor Kate Fisher. She is also co-editing (with Dr Elizabeth English and Dr Sarah Parker) a new edited collection entitled Interrogating Lesbian Modernisms: Histories, Forms, Genres (Edinburgh University Press, 2022) and (with Dr Hannah Roche) the first ever critical edition of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness (Oxford University Press, 2023).
Location: CWS students and staff should be able to see this event (with the Zoom link inside) on their Google Calendar timetable. If you're unable to see or access the session, please email Evangeline (boriana.alexandrova@york.ac.uk.).