Queer Bibliography: Tools, Methods, Practices, Approaches

Sexuality and textuality are tightly bound. From our earliest experiences of media –including print – LGBTQI+ individuals are employing queer interpretative methods and navigating the ways queer identities might be ‘read’ by others. And yet, while literature’s constitutive effect on queer subjectivities is relatively well-worked ground, how exactly print objects inform, acknowledge, embody and produce queer identities and communities is understudied in bibliographic terms.

This two-day symposium, hosted by the Institute of English Studies with support from Senate House Library, invites sustained discussion of bibliographical tools, practices, methods and approaches that are, in some way, distinctively queer. We will bring together contributors from diverse fields and every career stage: postgraduates, early career academics, established and independent scholars, librarians, archivists, activists, book arts practitioners, in-person and online. 

In-person places are extremely limited. Please note that there will be no lunch, but tea, coffee and cake for in-person attendees will be provided. 

The symposium will be followed by an optional, in-person one-day practice-based workshop at London Centre for Book Arts, where participants will collaborate on a queer workshop edition based on the previous days' discussions and research.

This event is convened by Dr Sarah Pyke and Dr Malcolm Noble, and has been generously funded by the Bibliographical Society and the Bibliographical Society of America.

This event is free to attend. 

In-person registration will close on the 30 January 2023.