Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence & Cultural
Change
University of Sussex
Queory
Seminar Series: Autumn 2010
Gay
Liberation in Britain: 40 Years On
Simon
Watney, University for the Creative Arts
Thursday,
14 October 2010
Fulton Building Room 104
6.00 pm
Simon
Watney has been involved in British lesbian and gay politics since 1970. He was co-founder with Mark Rowlands of
Brighton GLF and has a long-established international reputation in the field of
HIV/AIDS education and service provision.
He has also been extensively involved in cultural and voluntary sector
responses to HIV/AIDS both as a writer/scholar and as a founder of numerous
charities and not-for-profit companies.
From 1985-89, Simon was founding chair of the Health Education Group at
the Terrence Higgins Trust where he developed the Trust’s pioneering HIV
prevention campaigns. Simon also
was a member of the Learning About Aids Project based at Bristol Polytechnic,
which developed the main teaching text for HIV/AIDS education in British
secondary schools. In 1990, he was
co-founder of the activist group OutRage, and in 1991, he was founder-signatory
of the Red Ribbon Project in New York.
From 1988-1995, he wrote a monthly column on HIV/AIDS issues for the Gay Times. Openly HIV+, Simon was a
trustee of the charity Crusaid from 2007-2010, with a particular interest in
questions of AIDS and poverty in the UK.
Intertwined with his own personal trajectory, Simon’s talk will address
this rich history of the politics of sexual dissidence in Britain from 1970 to
the present day.
Brief bio:
Simon
Watney is currently Acting Head of the M.A. in Contextual Studies at the
University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, Surrey. His books include Policing Desire: Pornography, AIDS, and the
Media, which has been published in three editions (1987, 1989, and 1997),
and which won the 1987 Gustavus Meyer Prize for the study of human rights; Taking Liberties: AIDS and Cultural
Politics, co-edited with Erica Carter (1989), which won the 1990 US Words
Project and Gregory Kolovakos Prize; Practices of Freedom: Selected Writings on
HIV/AIDS (1994), and Imagine Hope:
AIDS and Gay Identity (2000).
Simon also received the Pink
Paper Annual Lifetime Achievement Award, London, in 2001 for his ‘long
campaigning for lesbian and gay rights and the rights of those affected by HIV
and AIDS.’
This seminar is free and open to the public. For more information, please contact Prof. William J Spurlin, Director of the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence & Cultural Change on [log in to unmask] We look forward to welcoming you at Sussex!