GenSex: Gender Sexuality and Research Group June 29, 2009

GenSex - Edge Hill's Gender and Sexuality Research Group - is holding its final session of the 2008-9 academic year on June 29th in M48, in the Main Building at the Ormskirk Campus. The session last from 4:30pm to 6:30pm.

'You're Never Alone with a Fist F**ker in Your Meat'

By Professor Robert Sheppard: Dept of English and History, Edge Hill University.

Professor Robert Sheppard will reflect upon issues of gender and sexuality that pervade much of his creative work, and particularly hisresistance to theorise any of this in a traditional academic way. He will focus upon the series 'Empty Dairies' from Twentieth Century Blues, and upon poetics as a speculative writerly discourse.

Robert Sheppard is Professor of Poetry and Poetics at Edge Hill University and is a poet-critic. His poetry includes Complete Twentieth Century Blues (2009) and his criticism includes Iain Sinclair (2007). He is co-editor of the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, but his blogzine at www.robertsheppard.blogspot.com is more fun.

'The Trap of Progression Narratives: Make-Over Shows, the Conceptualisations of Time, and Women’s Narratives'

By Dr Elke Weissmann: Media Department, Edge Hill University.

The paper investigates how make-over shows on television such as Ten Years Younger (Channel 4, 2004 - Present), How to Look Naked (Channel 4, 2006 to present) and Miss Naked Beauty (Channel 4, 2008 to present) with their transformation narratives apparently present temporal narratives in which time is reversed (making people younger, taking people back to a time when they were more confident, taking women back into a time when ‘natural beauty’ was more important than make-up, etc.).

In actual fact, these narratives trace time only as appearance on the women's bodies which also means that time becomes defined as corporeal. This denies women's lived histories in which narratives about women told by women are voiced. Importantly, this also means that alternative forms of narratives - such as more circular ones as developed, for example, in women's literature and film - are kept silent in favour of modernist (and more masculinist) progression narratives. The paper will draw on feminist critiques of neoliberal mainstreaming of feminism as well as on historiographic work which highlights the necessary circularity of women’s struggle to have their voices heard.

Elke Weissmann is a lecturer in film and television at Edge Hill University. She has previously worked as a postdoctoral research fellow on the AHRC-funded project 'British Television Drama and Acquired US Programmes, 1970-2000'. She holds a PhD in Television Studies from Glasgow University and has published on CSI and transnational television. She is member of Media Communication and Cultural Studies Association, and vice-chair of the television subsection of the European Communication Research and Education Association. Her research interests focus on television and gender.

Would you like to give a paper to GenSex or lead us in a workshop or seminar? Interdisciplinary research-based debates, presentations and art installations are always welcome. Topics can include... masculinities, feminisms, gender theories, queer studies, sexuality and subversion, bodily narratives and transgendered identities...just contact [email protected].