Sex

The Spontaneity of Freedom (SPONT), a European Research Council/UKRI-funded project based at University College London, explores forms of human agency and freedom that are not easily captured by models of rational planning or control. SPONT hosts an annual workshop: this year, the theme of the workshop will be “sex,” the first in a planned three-year conference series exploring  “sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll.”

Preliminary Schedule 

Wednesday, 8 July

9.45 Breakfast

10.00 Andreja Novakovic (University of California, Berkeley)– Frock Consciousness in The Second Sex

11.45 Ry Smith (Columbia University) – Who Cares about the Rules Anyway? Rendering BDSM Philosophically Legible

13.15 Lunch

14.30 Nick Clanchy (University of Oxford) – ‘Dreaming of a World Exempt from Meaning’: Roland Barthes on Love

16.00 Coffee break

16.15 Tim Dean (University of Illinois) – Libidinal Economies of Fascism

19.00 Dinner – The Lady Ottoline, 11A Northington St, London WC1N 2JF

Thursday, 9 July

9.45 Breakfast

10.00 Francey Russell (Barnard College and Columbia University) – Opacity and Intimacy: Kant on Sex and Friendship

11:45 Elena Comay del Junco (University of Connecticut) – Why Desire Is Better than Sex: Some History

13.15 Lunch

14.30 Lizzy Holt (University College London) – On Lesbian ‘Sex’

16.00 Coffee break

16.15 Keynote: Avgi Saketopoulou (Private Practice / NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis) – Race Play, Refracted: Trauma and Sexuality in Stalag Fiction

19.00 Dinner – Boulevard Brasserie, 40 Wellington St, London WC2E 7BD

Commentators

Ellie Anderson (Pomona College)

Ayesha Chakravarti (University College London)

Jeremey David Fix (University of Oxford)

Jonathan Gingerich (University College London and Rutgers University)

Federica Gregoratto (University of Lucerne)  

Kirstine La Cour (University of Oxford)

Ann Pellegrini (New York University)

Simon Shogry (University of Oxford)

Due to space and budgetary constraints, attendance at this workshop is by invitation. If you would like to attend, please write to [email protected] and we will accommodate you if possible.