IASSCS Sexuality Studies Conference 2015

The conference: Literacies and Sexualities in Cultural, Fictional, Real, and Virtual Worlds:Past, Present, Future Perfect? takes place from 17th to 20th June 2015 in the Helix, Dublin, Ireland.

This conference is co-organized by SALIS at Dublin City University (DCU), Ireland and hosted by Jean-Philippe Imbert

The Conference proposes to investigate the politics, nature, roles and effects of sexual (and gender) literacy in the cultural, fictional, real and virtual worlds. If literacy is the ability to read, write and make some sense of life and existence, sexual literacy is the ability to make some sense of the symbol systems relevant to the understanding and use of the concepts of sexuality, and of its inextricable intertwining with gender and all other oppressed and excluded identities. Through history, this sense-making is perpetually contingent, context-dependent, politically charged, highly contested and played out on national and international stages through policy and protest.

A sexual literacy that sees and welcomes a history of non-normative sexualities and gender can, and often is, framed as cultural heresy. Issues of sexual literacy are also taken on-board by the different protagonists in the health and medical worlds, which always inform cultural, ethical, legal and political discourses. Finally, artistic discourses (… architecture… literature… music… visual arts… performance arts…) belonging to high or popular cultures also endeavour to make sense of sex, sexualities and gender by providing a wide gamut of hermeneutical discourses. All these are different means of making sense of sexuality and of gender, in sites from classrooms to streets, from stages to senates.

Link to website: http://www.iasscs.org/2015conference