CLAGSThe Graduate Center
SEMINARS IN THE CITY

About Seminars in the City
CLAGS initiated the Seminars in the City program in July 1998. The series reflects CLAGS's commitment to providing a public forum for intellectual discussion and debate on and off the college campus. Seminars in the City also connects academics, activists, and the larger community. As Alisa Solomon, CLAGS's former Executive Director, points out, "Seminars in the City is one of the many ways in which CLAGS continues its commitment to bridging the academy and the community to share knowledge about gay and lesbian lives."

The monthly series offers an informal but intellectually charged environment for addressing major works of LGTBQ studies. The aim is to make complex and often abstruse ideas engaging for nonacademic readers. Previous Seminars leaders, themselves CLAGS board members, have found the Seminars experience "a delight." Anne Pellegrini, who taught "Introduction to Queer Theory" in the fall of 1998 recalls that, "the experience was a powerful and pleasurable reminder of the vital links possible between the academy and the streets, theory and living."

Elizabeth Freeman, who is a former CLAGS Board Member and the first organizer of the series, is proud of its success so far. Freeman says that the many semesters have generated a great deal of excitement, and the conversations in the seminars have been provocative, spirited, and insightful. "The success has already given us a sense of the intellectual, political, and artistic energy that thinkers outside the academy contribute to our shared inquiry," says Freeman. Each semester centers around a particular theme and is led by a CLAGS Board member with an expertise in the field.

Current Seminar

Fall 2011

Queer Bloomsbury/Buggersbury
Bloomsbury GroupFacilitator: Andrea Freud Loewenstein
Thursday Evenings, 10.20.11, 10.27.11, 11.03.11 and 11.10.11
7pm - 9pm

This seminar in the city will be a study of the Bloomsbury group, with a concentration on their position as sexual pioneers who challenged accepted sexual and gender mores in their writing and art and in the way they lived their lives.

Andrea Freud Loewenstein, author of This Place and The Worry Girl and Loathsome Jews and Engulfing Women, holds a doctorate in 20th century British literature from the University of Sussex . Her first exposure to Bloomsbury was in a seminar she took as an English major at Clark University, an intense experience involving twelve students at least six of whom later came out, including her (female) friend who moved in with the married woman professor who taught the seminar. Bloomsbury can do funny things .

To get a packet of readings mailed to you, call CLAGS above. Show up for any meeting: pre-registration is not required.

CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10016

ASL interpretation can be provided for any CLAGS event if requested 10 or more working days prior to the event.
If you have other accessibility needs, please contact the CLAGS office, with a relay operator when necessary.

Seminars in the City is sponsored by the International Resource Network.


Past Seminars