Date: Friday 6 December 2019 - Please book before 1st December 2019

Time: 9am - 6.45pm

Location:

Room JD T0.03
John Dalton Building
Chester Street
Manchester
M1 5GD

Tickets: Free - Available on Eventbrite

June 2019 marked the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York City, often credited as the spark that set gay liberation alight, not just in the U.S., but around the Western world. However, rather than a one-way flow from across the Atlantic, the European gay liberation and lesbian feminist movements that sprang up in the early 1970s were also influenced by national events, ideologies and imaginaries. They interacted with each other in a network of action and ideas. With this conference, we want to rethink the movements that Stonewall supposedly spawned in Europe. Join us to explore the national, European and transnational factors that gave rise to gay liberation.

Registration is free: please book via Eventbrite by 1 December. A vegetarian lunch is provided; please let us know if you have any further dietary or access requirements.

Download the full programme here

Programme

9.00 – 9.30 Tea and Coffee

9.30 – 9.45 Welcome and introductory remarks

9.45 – 10.45 Panel One – Protest Repertoires

‘We couldn’t mobilize the same enthusiasm as 11 years ago…’: Transnational Consciousness, Pride, and the Legacies of Stonewall in Denmark
Andrew Shield (Leiden University)

The Changing Face of Pride Events: Interrogating Trends and Changes in the Organisation of Pride Events in Europe
Francesca Romana Ammaturo (University of Roehampton)

10.45– 11.00 Tea and Coffee

11.00 – 12.30 Panel Two – Transatlantic Exchanges

‘What’s Going on in America?’ The Dutch Response to Anita Bryant
Ann Marie Wilson (Leiden University College)

Black Power, Gay Power, and Transatlantic Liberation
Christopher Ewing (Virginia Commonwealth University)

‘Acting Up against the AIDS State?’ – The Anti-AIDS Movements, Transnational Grassroots Activism, and the Legacy of Stonewall in 1980s and 1990s France and West Germany
Kevin-Niklas Breu (University of Bremen)

12.30 – 1.30 Lunch

1.30 – 3.00 Panel Three – Emotions, Intimacies, Faith

Gay liberation on the line: London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard, 1974-1990
Ralph Day (Birkbeck, University of London)

The Liberation of Gay Christians in Europe
Richard O’Leary (Queen’s University Belfast)

The Ambivalence of Feeling Backward: Lesbian Activists in the German Democratic Republic and their Politics of Memory
Maria Bühner (University of Leipzig)

3.00 – 3.15 Comfort break

3.15 – 4.15 Panel Four – Text and Action

‘Combat pour la libération de la femme’: A manifesto at the verge of 1960s universalism and 1970s particularism
Vojin Saša Vukadinović

National and transnational influences on Dutch radical lesbian and gay groups
Nina Littel (Leiden University)

4.15 – 4.45 Tea and Coffee

4.45 – 6.00 Roundtable

Lucy Robinson (University of Sussex)
Matt Cook (Birkbeck, University of London)
Rebecca Jennings (University College London)
Dan Callwood
Craig Griffiths (Manchester Metropolitan University)

6.00 – 6.45 Wine reception

Stonewall 50 years on: Gay Liberation and Lesbian Feminism in its European Context is kindly supported by the ‘Youth, Gender and Sexuality’ group of Manchester Met’s History Research Centre, by the Manchester Centre for Public History and Heritage, by the Past and Present Society, and by the Royal Historical Society.
The conference is organised in cooperation between the Manchester Centre for Public History and Heritage and the Raphael Samuel History Centre.

Organised by Craig Griffiths, Rebecca Jennings, and Dan Callwood.