News & Events

Pride Belongs to the People

A photo exhibition and talk by Dr. Daniel Conway

The Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies is proud to host a an exhibition of Pride Belongs to the People, and a talk with one of its creators, Dr. Daniel Conway, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Westminster, London, UK. 

Pride Belongs to the People: A Conversation with Dr. Daniel Conway

February 8, 2023 at 5:30pm 
C.W. Bill Young Hall, Room 206 (12303 USF Genshaft Drive, Tampa Campus)
Campus Map

Free parking will be available close to CWY for community members on a first-come basis in parking lots 21 and 37 (see campus map in squares 3E -3F for parking lot locations).

Join us for an enlightening conversation regarding Pride from an international perspective. Dr. Daniel Conway, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Westminster, will present his research on Pride in South Africa, reflecting on how a fraught and complex history of LGBTQ+ organizing within the city of Johannesburg has given rise to three separate Pride events in the city. These three Prides mirror broader tensions within South African society, but also reflect divergent beliefs about the meanings of Pride – its purpose, who it should represent, and what issues it should engage with. Dr. Conway will also discuss Pride in the context of other places, including Cuba, Taiwan, India, and the US. Selected photographs from the Pride Belongs to the People photo exhibition will be on display at the talk.

Q&A will follow the talk and will be facilitated by Nathan Bruemmer, former LGBTQ Consumer Advocate for Florida and former interim executive director of St. Pete Pride. 

Dr. Daniel Conway is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Westminster. The photographs and quotations of Pride Belongs to the People are from a Leverhulme Trust Fellowship researching the Global Politics of LGBTQ+ Pride between 2018 and 2019. Conway is currently writing The Global Politics of LGBTQ+ Pride: Queer Activism and Complicity in Africa, Asia and North America for Bloomsbury Press and is the author of ‘Whose Lifestyle Matters at Johannesburg Pride? The Lifestylisation of LGBTQ+ Identities and the Gentrification of Activism’, Sociology, (2022), vol. 56, no. 1: pp. 148-165 and ‘The politics of truth at LGBTQ+ Pride: contesting corporate Pride and revealing marginalized lives at Hong Kong Migrants Pride’ International Feminist Journal of Politics (2022). Contact: d.conway@westminster.ac.uk.

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Funding for this program was provided through a grant from Florida Humanities with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of Florida Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities.

 

Pride Belongs to the People Photo Exhibition

Soweto Pride

Opens February 8, 2023 
CMC 202 (CAS Multidisciplinary Complex, USF Cherry Drive, Tampa)
Open House Reception on February 8th from 3:00-4:00pm in CMC 202
Email to schedule a viewing appointment

We call for a Pride that is a microcosm of the society we wish to live in, and not a mirror of the divided one that we currently live in. We wish Pride to be a space that all can access, where all can be free, and where every voice is important.’
-Manifesto of the Johannesburg People’s Pride collective.

Pride Belongs to the People documents the struggles, circumstances and demands of LGBTQ+ activists in Johannesburg, South Africa, Taiwan, India, Cuba, and New York. 

Drawing from photographs and interviews that are part of a Leverhulme Trust-funded project on the Global Politics of Pride, the activists and Pride events highlighted sit outside of the ‘mainstream’ of LGBT advocacy and Pride events. Such mainstream events are characterized by generous corporate funding, official state support and highlight what have been termed ‘homonormative’ (Duggan, 2004) issues such as same-sex marriage and the benefits of corporate diversity and inclusion policies for professional employees. 

In this exhibition, we see the black queer activists of Soweto and Ekurhuleni Prides in Johannesburg, the students of the Queer Collective at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, queer activists in Cuba, ‘Hand Job’ queer sex and disability activists at Taiwan Pride and the Reclaim Pride  Queer Liberation March, Dyke March and Drag March in New York. 

-Daniel Conway, University of Westminster, London, UK 

To read more about the exhibit, visit this University of Westminster article.