Register now for the annual Southampton Stonewall Lecture, "LGBTQ in a Time of War: The Queer History of the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict", with Professor Dan Healey
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While President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine may seem to have little relevance to LGBTQ politics, in Putin’s own statements and decrees he has argued that one aim of the February 2022 invasion was to prevent the spread to Russia and its neighbours of ‘Western’ forms of tolerance for LGBTQ ways of life. Anti-LGBTQ campaigns in the Russian parliament and media have amplified the anti-Western sentiment that drives public support for the war against Ukrainian independence.
The Kremlin’s official homophobia has evolved over two decades, mirroring the shape-shifting of Putin’s image and methods of rule. This lecture will explore how Putin’s use of state-backed homophobia has developed under his leadership. What are the historic roots of this homophobia which resonate with many Russian voters?
Dan Healey is Emeritus Professor of Modern Russian History at the University of Oxford. He is a historian of sexualities and genders in modern Russia and the Soviet Union. His publications include Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi, (Bloomsbury, 2017), and the first full-length history of homosexuality in Russia, Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent (University of Chicago Press, 2001). He continues to study the development of LGBTQ histories and communities in the non-Russian republics of the former Soviet Union, and is currently writing a book about medicine in the Stalinist Gulag.
This will be a hybrid event. Attendees can book to attend in-person at the Avenue Campus, University of Southampton, or select a ticket to join the talk online. For those attending in person, there will be refreshments available before the talk begins, with a short reception afterwards.
Further details including the Lecture Theatre location and joining instructions will be updated nearer the time.
If you have any questions about this event please contact fahevent@soton.ac.uk
Register now