20 – 22 July 2017
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Faculty of Languages and Literatures
Institute for German Literature
Research Center for the Cultural History of Sexuality
Conception and Organization
Janin Afken, Andreas Kraß, Benedikt Wolf
Contact and Registration
kulturgeschichte-sexualitaet@hu-berlin.de
Venues
Cinema Arsenal, Potsdamer Straße 2, 10785 Berlin
Ballroom of the Humboldt Graduate School, Luisenstraße 56, 10117 Berlin
Both of the venues are wheelchair accessible.
Historical accounts of the 1970s lesbian and gay movement (s) often draw the picture of a legendary decade, a golden age for queer sexual politics and culture. This view is in the literature and film, both of the 1970s themselves and of our times. However, what exactly made the 1970s a “legendary decade”? What was its revolutionary potential and what were its path-breaking political and aesthetic strategies? Which elements, movements and memories have been marginalized in order to facilitate the historical construction of the “legendary decade”?
The conference aims at exploring the queer appeal of the 1970s by both highlighting their leg-endary aspects and questioning the historical construction of the legendary decade. The con-ference on the representation and construction of the queer 1970s in literature and film and highlights the process of cultural canonization and the differences between male and female homosexual expression.
Conference Language is English
Thursday, 20 July 2017, Kino Arsenal, Potsdamer Straße 2
6.30 pm: Welcoming Speeches by Ulrike Vedder, Andreas Kraß, Glyn Davis
7 pm: Madame X – An Absolute Ruler Madame X. Film screening (German original with English subtitles) with an introduction by the director Ulrike Ottinger
Friday, 21 July 2017, Halls of the Humboldt Graduate School, Luisenstraße 56
9:30 am: Introduction by Benedikt Wolf
9:50 am: “We were so turned on”. Reflections on Queer (ing) Past and Memory. Keynote by Susanne Hochreiter (Vienna). Chair: Tomasz Basiuk (Warsaw)
10:50 am: Coffee break
11:10 am: Session 1: The Canonized Queer 1970s, Chair: Agnieszka Koscianska (Warsaw)
• Janin Afken (Berlin): From Sisters’ Skin to Womb Ego. Solidarity and corporeality in Verena Stefan’s Shedding (1975)
• Patsy l’Amour laLove (Berlin): A Legend of Gay Emancipation: Rosa von Praunheim’s film “It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse” (1971)
• Benedikt Wolf (Berlin): Hubert Fichte’s Language of Desire. From “the Unchaste” to “Oymeln” in the Hamburg Novels
12:40 pm: Lunch break
2pm: Queer’s Give Me Break. Keynote by Marc Siegel (Frankfurt aM / Berlin). Chair: Juan Suárez (Murcia).
3 pm: Coffee break
3:20 pm: Session 2: Contesting the Canon, Chair: Hannes Hacke (Berlin)
• Chris Auld (Ormskirk): Camp Subversion in the Films of RW Fassbinder
• Vojin Saša Vukadinović (Zurich): Aesthetics, Critique, Satire. The Black Messenger and the Promise of Revolution
• Peter Rehberg (Berlin): “Bearded Men Naked on Dormitory”: Post and Pre-Aids Representations of Gay Masculinity
4:50 pm: Coffee break
5:10 pm: Session 3: Retrospections, Chair: Patsy l’Amour laLove (Berlin)
• Maria Bühner (Leipzig): How to Remember Invisibility: Documentary Projects on Lesbians in the German Democratic Republic as Archives of Feelings
• Sebastian Zilles (Siegen ): The 1970s in retrospective. HIV / AIDS Discourses in German Literature
Saturday, 22 July 2017, Ballroom of the Humboldt Graduate School, Luisenstraße 56
9:30 am: Session 4: European Perspectives, Chair: Friederike Faust (Berlin)
• Alejandro Melero (Madrid): LGTB Representation and Film Censorship in German-Spanish Co-Productions During the Last Years of Franco’s Dictatorship (1970-1975)
• Krzysztof Zablocki (Warsaw): Wolfgang Jöhling – A Builder of Bridges Between German and Polish LGBT Scenes
• Juan A. Suárez (Murcia): The Operatic Tableau in Seventies Queer Cinema: Werner Schroeter, Adolpho Arrieta, Teo Hernández
11 am: Coffee break
11:30 am: Panel Discussion: Tomasz Basiuk (Warsaw), Michael Bochow (Berlin), Antke Engel (Berlin), Laura Guy (Edinburgh), Agnieszka Koscianska (Lesbians and Gay Men in the 1970s? Warsaw), Alberto Berzosa (Murcia); Chair: Fiona Anderson (Newcastle)
Laura Guy writes about art, photography and queer culture 