TUESDAY Ropes Lecture: Michigan's Halperin Looks at Lives of Gay Men

For UC's Department of English and Comparative Literature, the annual Ropes Lecture Series is the highlight of winter quarter. Named after Cincinnati industrialist Nathaniel Ropes, whose endowment to the University of Cincinnati funds the program, the Ropes Lecture Series brings a collection of prominent writers and scholars to campus to present public lectures, take part in panel discussions, and participate in graduate classes on both the master’s and doctoral levels, all focused on a unifying theme.

Writing Sex
This year’s theme is “Writing Sex” — an introduction to the study of the representation of sexuality in a wide variety of literary forms. Drawing energy from lesbian and gay studies and from queer theory, “Writing Sex” casts a critical gaze over the construction and representation of all sexualities, not just queer ones. In the process of studying the representation of sex and sexuality, the hope is to learn more about one of the most important dimensions of how contemporary Western individuals define themselves, both individually and collectively.

David Halperin, Jan. 9: What Do Gay Men Want? Sex, Risk, and the Subjective Life of Homosexuality

David M. Halperin, PhD, is the W. H. Auden Collegiate Professor of English Language and Literature and professor of women’s studies at the University of Michigan, and honorary professor of sociology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. His most recent book is How to Do the History of Homosexuality (2002). Along with Valerie Traub and Nadine Hubbs, he co-directs the Lesbian-Gay-Queer Research Initiative at the University of Michigan.

All the lectures, which are free and open to the public, begin at 8 p.m. in ERC 427.  For more information, contact Jonathan Alexander at (513) 556-6173.

The Ropes 2007 Lecture Series is sponsored by the Nathaniel P. Ropes Endowment and the Department of English and Comparative Literature, McMicken College of Arts & Sciences.