IAS Book Launch: Lesbian Intimacies and Family Life
19 March 2024, 6:00 pm–8:00 pm
Join us for the launch of Rebecca Jennings's new book 'Lesbian Intimacies and Family Life: Desire, domesticity and kinship in Britain and Australia, 1945-2000'
This event is free.
Event Information
Open to
- All | UCL staff | UCL students
Availability
- Yes
Cost
- Free
Organiser
-
Institute of Advanced Studies
Location
-
IAS Forum (G17)Gower StreetLondonWC1E 6BTUnited Kingdom
Taking a transnational perspective, Lesbian Intimacies and Family Life: Desire, domesticity and kinship in Britain and Australia, 1945-2000 (Bloomsbury, 2023)Ìýtraces the relationship models andÌýfamilial patterns constructed by lesbians and same-sex attracted women living inÌýBritain and Australia between 1945 and 2000. Combining personal stories with analysisÌýof representations of lesbian intimacy in literature, press articles, medical texts, andÌýarchival material, the book demonstrates the ways in which changing political andÌýcultural concepts of sexuality impacted on individual and collective attitudes,Ìýhighlighting the huge variety in women’s experiences. Through considering histories ofÌýlesbian desire within marriage and the experience of lesbian mothers in divorce courts,Ìýthis book shows how lesbian relationships provided alternative models of interpersonalÌýrelations, impacting on broader patterns of sexuality, and helping redefine notions ofÌýthe family in the modern era.
The discussion will be chaired by Dr Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite (UCL History). She will be joined by (Jonathan Cooper Professor of the History of Sexualities, Mansfield College, Oxford) and Professor Alison Oram (Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research) who will comment on the book and its significance for the field. Ìý
For more information about the book visit .
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About the Speaker
Rebecca Jennings
at UCL Department of History
Rebecca completed her PhD at the University of Manchester, where she taught for a few years before taking up a research fellowship at Macquarie University, Sydney. After moving back to the UK she joined UCL History, where she was a teaching fellow for some years before being appointed lecturer in 2018. She teaches on the history of gender and sexuality in modern Britain. Her research focuses on twentieth-century British and Australian lesbian history and she is the author of Tomboys and Bachelor Girls: A lesbian history of post-war Britain (2007); A Lesbian History of Britain: Love and sex between women since 1500 (2007); and Unnamed Desires: A Sydney lesbian history (2015).
More about Rebecca Jennings