Jaanus Samma NSFW. A Chairman’s Tale. Props. 2015. Photo by Reimo Võsa-Tangsoo.
The second edition of the international conference „Queer Narratives in European Cultures” gathers scholars from various fields of humanities who deal with LGBTI history and queer theory. The conference will be focused on the region of the Baltic States and their neighboring countries – the region of East and Central Europe where LGBTI and queer studies are still an emerging discipline. Due to the historical conditions and the post-socialist legacy, LGBTI activism and scholarship of gay and lesbian history of the region has developed almost simultaneously with queer theory and its politics of difference and anti-representation. The conference will focus on both of these divisions, serving as a meeting point for scholars of different backgrounds and disciplines.
Keynote Speakers:
Dan Healey is Professor of Modern Russian History at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); translated as: Гомосексуальное влечение в революционной России: Регулирование сексуально-гендерного диссидентства (М. Ладомир, 2008); and is co-editor of volumes on Russian masculinities and on Soviet medicine. His latest publication is Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi (London & New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018).
Lukasz Szulc is Marie Curie Individual Fellow in the Media and Communications Department of the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. He is co-editor of the book LGBTQs, Media and Culture in Europe (2017) and author of the monograph Transnational Homosexuals in Communist Poland (2017).
Jaanus Samma is a visual artist based in Tallinn, Estonia. Samma studied printmaking at the Fine Art department of Estonian Academy of the Arts, acquiring a BA in 2005 and MA in fine arts in 2009. Samma is currently participating in the Estonian Academy of Arts doctoral program for fine arts. His topic for artistic research is mapping gay narratives in Soviet Estonia. His PhD combines interviews and archive research, but also more subjective and artistic output based on the findings. Samma represented Estonia in 2015 at the 56th Venice Biennale with his project NSFW: A Chairman’s Tale.
