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Embodied Biographies and Sexy Stories

Saturday, July 19, 2014: 10:30 AM-12:20 PM
Room: Booth 60
RC38 Biography and Society (host committee)

Language: English

This session focuses on sexual experiences, sexual practices and sexual identities from a biographical perspective. On the one hand, sexuality is often left out of biographical research as though it had no appreciable influence on people’s lives, sense of self, or relationship with the world around them. On the other hand, sexuality studies often look at sexual practices and cultural discourses without attending to how these practices and discourses shape individual biographies. In this session, we want to explore some of the methodological, normative, and theoretical challenges of biographical research on sexuality. For example, how do different social contexts and cultural discourses and normative formations shape people’s sexual experiences? How are sexual identities constructed in life stories?
Session Organizer:
Kathy DAVIS, VU University, Netherlands
Chair:
Kathy DAVIS, VU University, Netherlands
The Sex Lives Of Sex Researchers (Oral Presentation)
Janice IRVINE, University of Massachusetts, USA

Talking about Sexuality in Order to Deal with Discrimination? Gay Men in Palestine (Oral Presentation)
Gabriele ROSENTHAL, Georg-August University of Göttingen, Germany; Hendrik HINRICHSEN, Georg-August-University of Göttingen, Germany