Exisiting & Emerging Black British Scholarship Series - Dr Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman

PAST EVENT | 18 May 2023 17:00 - 18 May 2023 18:30

Our Story of our struggle against “Section 28” has been Stonewalled, argues Dr Coleman, in this, the first part of their 'New History of "Section 28" in Four Gay Lessons'

This seminar series is supported by TORCH & Pembroke College. The event will take place in the Digital Hub, Cheng Building at Jesus College, Oxford.

The second part of this series with Dr Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman, entitled 'Black Brummie Schoolboy' will take place at Wolfson College on Thursday 25th May. Find more details here.

Stonewalling Our Story

‘It wasn’t our issue. It was not our issue. I didn’t get a sense from any Black Queer people at the time that “This is our battle. This is our issue”’, testifies one contributor to the oral history archive at the Haringey Vanguard Project. Why wasn’t “Section 28”—Britain’s law banning the “promotion of homosexuality”—“our issue”, “our battle”, or our struggle? Or, rather, why did it then, and why does it still now, seem not to have been our struggle?

Having consulted hitherto neglected archives and having conducted original oral history interviews, Dr Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman answers this question by building on an observation made, in February 1988, by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick: ‘one meaning, the Capital one, of the word “stonewall” [is] the simple, stubborn fact or [rather] pretense of ignorance’.

Our Story of our struggle against “Section 28” has been Stonewalled, argues Dr Coleman, in this, the first part of their new history of “Section 28”. Black Queer participation in, and, crucially, perspectives on, the struggle against what became “Section 28” have been written out of history by a collective pretence of ignorance, an agreement to misinterpret and to misinstruct the world, that began in February 1988 with the birth pangs of a Lobby Group named “Stonewall”. We need, Dr Coleman concludes, a new history of “Section 28”.

Dr Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman

Independent historian of ideas and heritage consultant, Dr Coleman is Project Director of the National Lottery Heritage Funded project Reclaiming Community Heritage, a unique partnership between The Ubele Initiative and 81 Acts of Exuberant Defiance, and is Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, where they are building a database of contested colonial statues in Britain and France, for Cast in Stone

Born in Birmingham, they are writing a book about our collective memory of the colonial and anti-colonial arguments by which Birmingham both built and attempted to abolish British Empire. Find out how they came to write this book by reading their blog for Reluctant Sites of Memory: “My Journey in Our Struggle“. Get a taste of some of the arguments of their book, by watching their keynote for the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre: “About The House“, by watching their talk for Hegel (anti)kolonial at the Humboldt University of Berlin: “Hegel and Heyrick“, or by listening to their podcast for the Henry Moore Institute: “Britain’s #BlackLivesMatter Statue“.

Their current work towards this book is “Don’t Die of Ignorance: A New History of 'Section 28' in Four Gay Lessons“. The first two Gay Lessons Dr Coleman will present at the University of Oxford, in May 2023, to mark the 35th anniversary of the coming into force, on 24th May 1988, of the law, introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s third Government, banning local councils from “promoting homosexuality” as a “pretended family relationship”. A closer and more critical attention, Dr Coleman argues, to the ways in which Black Queer activists resisted Tory attacks, in the 1980s, on both anti-heterosexist and anti-apartheid education could equip us better, against Tory attacks, in the 2020s, to defend both Critical Race Theory and Relationships and Sex Education embracing Trans experience. Having been cheated by Britain of Gay Lessons as a child, Dr Coleman will not rest until all children in Britain get taught Black Trans-Queer Lessons.

Exisiting & Emerging Black British Scholarship Series - Dr Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman

PAST EVENT | 18 May 2023 17:00 - 18 May 2023 18:30

Our Story of our struggle against “Section 28” has been Stonewalled, argues Dr Coleman, in this, the first part of their 'New History of "Section 28" in Four Gay Lessons'

This seminar series is supported by TORCH & Pembroke College. The event will take place in the Digital Hub, Cheng Building at Jesus College, Oxford.

The second part of this series with Dr Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman, entitled 'Black Brummie Schoolboy' will take place at Wolfson College on Thursday 25th May. Find more details here.

Stonewalling Our Story

‘It wasn’t our issue. It was not our issue. I didn’t get a sense from any Black Queer people at the time that “This is our battle. This is our issue”’, testifies one contributor to the oral history archive at the Haringey Vanguard Project. Why wasn’t “Section 28”—Britain’s law banning the “promotion of homosexuality”—“our issue”, “our battle”, or our struggle? Or, rather, why did it then, and why does it still now, seem not to have been our struggle?

Having consulted hitherto neglected archives and having conducted original oral history interviews, Dr Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman answers this question by building on an observation made, in February 1988, by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick: ‘one meaning, the Capital one, of the word “stonewall” [is] the simple, stubborn fact or [rather] pretense of ignorance’.

Our Story of our struggle against “Section 28” has been Stonewalled, argues Dr Coleman, in this, the first part of their new history of “Section 28”. Black Queer participation in, and, crucially, perspectives on, the struggle against what became “Section 28” have been written out of history by a collective pretence of ignorance, an agreement to misinterpret and to misinstruct the world, that began in February 1988 with the birth pangs of a Lobby Group named “Stonewall”. We need, Dr Coleman concludes, a new history of “Section 28”.

Dr Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman

Independent historian of ideas and heritage consultant, Dr Coleman is Project Director of the National Lottery Heritage Funded project Reclaiming Community Heritage, a unique partnership between The Ubele Initiative and 81 Acts of Exuberant Defiance, and is Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, where they are building a database of contested colonial statues in Britain and France, for Cast in Stone

Born in Birmingham, they are writing a book about our collective memory of the colonial and anti-colonial arguments by which Birmingham both built and attempted to abolish British Empire. Find out how they came to write this book by reading their blog for Reluctant Sites of Memory: “My Journey in Our Struggle“. Get a taste of some of the arguments of their book, by watching their keynote for the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre: “About The House“, by watching their talk for Hegel (anti)kolonial at the Humboldt University of Berlin: “Hegel and Heyrick“, or by listening to their podcast for the Henry Moore Institute: “Britain’s #BlackLivesMatter Statue“.

Their current work towards this book is “Don’t Die of Ignorance: A New History of 'Section 28' in Four Gay Lessons“. The first two Gay Lessons Dr Coleman will present at the University of Oxford, in May 2023, to mark the 35th anniversary of the coming into force, on 24th May 1988, of the law, introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s third Government, banning local councils from “promoting homosexuality” as a “pretended family relationship”. A closer and more critical attention, Dr Coleman argues, to the ways in which Black Queer activists resisted Tory attacks, in the 1980s, on both anti-heterosexist and anti-apartheid education could equip us better, against Tory attacks, in the 2020s, to defend both Critical Race Theory and Relationships and Sex Education embracing Trans experience. Having been cheated by Britain of Gay Lessons as a child, Dr Coleman will not rest until all children in Britain get taught Black Trans-Queer Lessons.