Registration
This is a hybrid event. Those who select digital participation when signing up will receive a Zoom link close to the time of the seminar.
About the event
In Western society today, sexuality is seen as an expected and indeed compulsory part of anyone’s life and identity. Feminist theory has since the 1980s thematized compulsory heterosexuality, and disability studies has since widened that notion to see how it interacts with compulsory ablebodiedness.
One identity category remains rather underexplored, however: asexuality. Asexuality is an important perspective to use when investigating the ties between sexuality, desire, and attraction. It is also key to understanding the role sexuality plays in how we understand people (ourselves and others), and in how we assign unequal value to different relations between us (sexual relations over friendships or romantic relations, for example). Asexuality also plays an important role in relation to disability and health, and to how we conceive of sexuality and ageing.
In this seminar, we ask:
- Asexuality is still rather unknown - why?
- How does asexuality challenge sexual expectations and sexual identity categories, as well as challenge the centering of sexuality in general?
- Why do the sexual expectations that directly affect asexuals matter to non-asexuals?
- What are the potentials and challenges discussed in asexual research?
Speakers
- Anna Kurowicka (PhD, assistant professor, University of Warsaw)
- Sunniva Árja Tobiasen (Researcher and university lecturer, STK)
- Janne Bromseth (PhD)
Moderator: Sara E. S. Orning (Senior Lecturer, STK)
Accessibility
The first part of the Zoom meeting (presentations by the speakers) will use automated closed captioning. The second part (panel conversation) will not have closed captioning. The entire event will be recorded and published (with closed captioning) on the Centre for Gender Research website afterwards.