Bear Studies Symposium

The Bear Studies Symposium brings together academic and non-academic scholars, students, and researchers investigating gay/bi/queer (GBQ) 'Bears'.

The Bear label for GBQ men has been in use since at least the early 1980s. Since then the label has spread from the west coast of the USA, with Bear now a heterogeneous global phenomenon. Researchers have explored Bear cultures (Wright 1997; 2001), masculinities (Hennen 2008), identities (Quidley-Rodriguez & De Santis 2019), and geographies (McGlynn 2024). But both inside and outside of academia, scholarship on Bears remains both scarce and fragmented. Therefore this online symposium aims to 1) support scholars across all disciplines and none in sharing their research, 2) generate new research through networking, and 3) to kindle the transdisciplinary field of 'Bear Studies'. The keynote speaker will be pre-eminent Bear scholar Dr Les Wright (editor of The Bear Book and The Bear Book II). Dr Wright will share his most recent writing on Bears, and discuss changes to Bear culture in the decades since his seminal books were published. Other speakers include Dr Nick McGlynn (author of Bodies & Boundaries of UK Bear Spaces) and Vinicius Flauaus (author of Ursos, Filhotes e Caçadores: história da comunidade «Bear» em São Paulo), with time for discussion, networking, and snacks.

The Bear Studies Symposium understands Bear as a broad and changing phenomenon, rather than a restrictive one. It is intended to build towards a planned special issue of an academic journal (e.g. Journal of Homosexuality), to which attendees will be invited to contribute. We also hope that it will build a small but stimulating online network of scholars and researchers focused on Bears, through which attendees can continue to share and collaborate in the future. Such a network could take the form of a mailing list, a social media platform, or another approach.

The event will take place via Microsoft Teams. We encourage cross-linguistic communication, and will use automated translation tools to support this. Presentations and facilitation will be in English, but live translation of captions into other languages will be available (including Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and more). We recommend tools such as Google Translate for cross-linguistic discussion via chat sidebars. Presentations will be recorded and shared with attendees.

15:00-15:20 BST

Welcome & introductory remarks (Dr Nick McGlynn, Dr Alexandre Rodolfo Alves de Almeida)

15:20-16:00 BST

Keynote: 'Visibility and Intersectionality: where do we go from here?' (Dr Les Wright) + questions/discussion

16:05-16:45

'Being "Bear-y" - the fuzzy categorical boundaries of Bear' (Dr Nick McGlynn) + questions/discussion

16:45-17:05 BST

Break for snacks

17:05-17:45 BST

'Brazilian Anthropophagic Bears' (Vinicius Flauaus) + questions/discussion

17:45-18:00 BST

Closing remarks (Dr Nick McGlynn, Dr Alexandre Rodolfo Alves de Almeida)

Dr Les Wright (Bear History Project International, USA)

Dr Wright is the world's foremost scholar of all things Bear. His edited collections The Bear Book and The Bear Book II are required reading for anyone interested in Bears, and form the foundation for all contemporary Bear research. Dr Wright continues to research Bear culture and history through the Bear History Project International and his series. An upcoming Bear Book III will document changes to Bear culture over the past 25 years.

Dr Nick McGlynn (University of Brighton, UK)

Dr McGlynn is the author of the world's only academic monograph focused on Bears. In Bodies & Boundaries of UK Bear Spaces he argues in favour of understanding Bears and their spaces through bodies rather than identities, and stresses both inter- and intra-national variation in Bear as a phenomenon. His other research on Bears has challenged the idea of Bear spaces as fat-inclusive, and explored different geographic aspects of Bear.

Vinicius Flauaus (Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Brazil)

Historian and Master in Social History from PUC-SP, with a specialization in Contemporary Cultural Management. Author of the book Bears, Cubs and Chasers: A History of the 'Bear' Community in São Paulo. Since 2016, he has been an operations supervisor at the Museum of Art of São Paulo (MASP). He contributed to the exhibition 25 Years of the Video Library at the now-extinct PUC-SP Video Library. He received an award for best research with the study Vila Alpina Crematorium: From the Tribune to the Funeral Urn at the 24th Scientific Initiation Meeting of the Pontifical Catholic University, PUC-SP. Vinicius primarily works on the following themes: city and imagination, body, virility, and homosexuality.

This event is free, but to help us manage numbers individual registration via Eventbrite is required. Once you have registered, you will be emailed a link to the scheduled Microsoft Teams meeting.

The Bear Studies Symposium is organised by Dr Nick McGlynn (University of Brighton, UK) and Dr Alexandre Rodolfo Alves de Almeida (Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal). It is sponsored by the University of Brighton's Centre for Transforming Sexuality & Gender; the Universidade de Aveiro's Centro de Lìnguas, Literaturas e Culturas; and the community-based Bear History Project International.

For queries, please contact Nick at [email protected].

Host or Publisher Dr Nick McGlynn