Ryan Conrad's Blog

Just last week I recorded a podcast episode with Jamila and Zeb from the Resistant Communiqués Collective to talk social movement history, radical queer politics, and the (de-)evolution of Pride.  The episode is available here and includes a helpful multi-media syllabus. I was honoured to participate in their well organized and well researched program and look forward to listening to future episodes that this collective creates!

This past May I began a one-year mandate as the President of the part-time contract faculty and teaching/research assistant union at Carleton University. Since then I’ve been busy learning my new role and helping both units prepare for bargaining that is set to commence upon the expiration of the current collective agreements at the end of August. I also attended the CUPE Ontario Convention, helping pass a resolution with my fellow colleagues to support university sector unions in seeking greater transparency from universities regarding their budgets and budgetary decisions.

This summer I’m finalizing an essay that will appear in the anthology that provides an overview of the case studies for the Archive/Counter-Archive project. I’ll be outlining the specifics of the case study that I helped lead on twentieth century Toronto HIV/AIDS activist tapes in Vtape’s sprawling and impressive video distribution collection. The chapter reflects on the team’s research questions, theoretical frames, archival methods, project outcomes, and musings for future directions/research. The book is edited by by members of the A/CA network and will be published by Concordia University Press next year.

Research with the Sex Worker Self-Authoring in the Canadian Women’s Movement Archive project continues into its second year. The research team is working through the ethics process so that we can shift from wrapping up our archival research in the CWMA to begin doing interviews with a handful of veteran Canadian sex worker activists about how they would like to see their  materials (and their colleagues’) stewarded. Much of these materials, including the material at the CWMA, have ended up in formal archives and memory institutions without their knowledge or consent. We’ll begin working on creating an alternative finding aid for the sex worker-authored materials in the CWMA while we finish the ethics process and begin doing interviews. We are also preparing a video program of shorts featuring queer and trans Canadian sex workers talking about themselves, their activism, and their work for a new queer film festival launching in Ottawa this Fall called ChormaQueer.  More details to come in September!

As many of you know, I’ve been infatuated with gay HIV-positive sex worker activist Danny Cockerline since stumbling upon some archival materials in the Canadian Women’s Movement Archive related to the Canadian Organization for the Rights of Prostitutes and HIV/AIDS activism eight years ago. Since then I’ve slowly accumulated material about him, from personal writings and photos in archival institutions to audio recordings of public speeches and video documentation. Danny’s work, sharp analysis, humour, and unrepentant sexiness in the face of so much anti-gay/anti-sex worker hatred, violence, death, and respectability politics that marked the ’80s and ’90s is a literal spectacle to behold and learn from! As part of the inaugural cohort of OutHistory Fellows I have created a digital exhibition that includes an original text, dozens of photos from various archives and personal collections, organizations’ documents from some of Canada’s earliest sex worker rights’ organizations, three videos, and an audio recording of Danny’s last public appearance on a panel of sex workers discussing pressing issues in Toronto’s sex worker scene in late 1995. You can view the full digital exhibition here: Danny Cockerline: Toronto’s Patron Saint of Whores & Hustlers (1960-1995)

Alongside three of my Research Assistants I will be presenting some of the preliminary findings from the Sex Worker Self-Authoring in the Canadian Women’s Movement Archive project at the annual Sexuality Studies Association conference in Toronto this spring. Emily, Diksha, Jasmin, and I will be presenting at ##pm on May ## at George Brown College where the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences will be hosting their annual Congress of which the SSA is a part.

In a few short weeks I will conclude my Human Rights & Sexualities course at Carleton. I did not receive any course contracts for the summer, so as per usual I will be applying for Employment Insurance. The federal EI program is, in a substantive way, subsidizing the underfunded university system in Ontario where cheap contract faculty like myself are about equal to the number of full time faculty.  Unlike them, we are cheap labour that is kept on during the Fall and Winter semesters only to be let go in the summer to fend for ourselves. Surprisingly, EI payments for the summer pay better than a summer course contract at Carleton.

This semester I am also finishing up my service as the Vice President Internal at CUPE 4600, the union of contract faculty and teaching/research assistants at Carleton. I will be running for President this spring in the hopes that I’ll be leading the union through it’s next round of bargaining that is set to commence late this summer.

Last October I was invited by members of Independent Jewish Voices Carleton to speak at the exhibition opening of Silenced by Scholasticide on behalf Faculty4Palestine’s Ottawa chapter. It was an honour to speak alongside Dr. Iyas Salim Abu-Hajiar, Dr. Nahla Abdo, and Dr. Chandni Desai at this profoundly moving event. Despite the sombre mood of collective mourning that this exhibition evokes, I made a point to remind attendees that art can do more than allowing us to bear witness to the atrocity—important in itself, but art can do much more! Indeed, the art of the oppressed can celebrate defiant joy and humour in the face of unspeakable violence and terror.

In late November I attended the Viral Interventions conference held at Vtape in Toronto.  I participated in a panel with Lesley Loksi Chan, Em Barton, Conal McStravic and Ken Morrison on working with HIV/AIDS activist/artist video archives. I presented my in-progress work researching queer Canadian HIV/AIDS and sex worker activist Danny Cockerline. I showed excerpts from Our Bodies Our Business, Hot & Safe, and Whore Culture as well as a short audio recording of Danny’s last known public appearance on a panel of sex worker activists at Toronto’s Harbourfront in early December of 1995. It was a pleasure to share this archival footage of Danny that I have been collecting as part of a larger researchproject for Outhistory.org.

I’m putting the final touches on my digital exhibition about Danny as part of the first cohort of OutHistory Fellows.  I’ve gathered archival photos, video footage, diary entries, and piles of activist ephemera from Danny’s time working with The Body Politic, the Canadian Organization for the Rights of Prostitutes, the Prostitutes Safe Sex Project, Maggie’s, and the Sex Workers’ Alliance of Toronto. The full text with images and video clips will be available this spring alongside the work of the other fellows. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone’s work and getting Danny’s life and work more concretely entered into the historical record of queer, HIV/AIDS, and sex worker social movements in Canada.

For the last four months I’ve been working with a small team of research assistants to locate and review all the sex worker-authored materials held in the Canadian Women’s Movement Archive, a unique collection within the Archives and Special Collections at the University of Ottawa. This work is central to my SSHRC Insight Development Grant that provides funding to develop an alternative finding aid for these materials spread across dozens of fonds within the CWMA.  Over the winter I’ll be finalizing the ethics protocol so that next summer I can interview some of the old pros whose materials are found within the CWMA—often to their complete surprise!

Lastly, just days ago I finished up what has been one of the busiest teaching semesters I’ve ever had.  With 150 students across three courses, this falls has been a lot to manage.  During the coming winter semester I’ll have a greatly reduced course load. Going down to a single course on Human Rights & Sexualities will make it so I can focus on research, writing, and helping my union prepare for bargaining a new collective agreement after the current one expires in the summer.

Over the summer I learned that my SSHRC Insight Development Grant to conduct research in the Canadian Women’s Movement Archive at University of Ottawa was successful. The $70,000 will go to supporting research activities leading to the creation of an alternative finding aid that links together all of the materials authored by sex workers across various fonds within and linked to the CWMA. This two-year project is just beginning, so stay tuned for updates and events related to the project!

November 29th and 30th I will be participating in a conference that marks the culmination of John Greyson and Sarah Flicker’s Viral Interventions project. I will be speaking on a panel titled “Struggles: HIV, Video & the Archive” where I will present my research on queer sex worker and HIV/AIDS activist Danny Cockerline and screen short excerpts from recovered videos that date to the early 1990s. This panel will take place on the 29th of November from 10am – 1pm alongside a slue of other video artists and archivists in the screening room at Vtape.

This fall I am teaching three courses at Carleton University: Public Health & Human Rights, HIV/AIDS Film & Video, and Gender, Sexuality, & National Security. This winter I will also teach a brand new course titled Queer & Trans Youth. In addition to teaching at Carleton this academic year, I continue to serve as the Vice President Internal of CUPE 4600, the union for Teaching Assistants and Contract Faculty at the University. Our collective agreement expires in less than a year and we are gearing up for bargaining next summer.

My new book titled Toronto Living With AIDS was recently published through a collaboration between Vtape, Archive/Counter-Archive and PUBLIC Books). The book features an essays, transcripts of interview I conducted with surviving contributors to TLWA, and reflections penned by contemporary activists and artists looking back on the dozen or so tapes that made up the community cable television program. The book launch will take place at the Toronto Queer Film Festival’s annual symposium set to run from March 14-17, 2024.  I’ll be joined by TLWA contributors Kaspar Saxena, Ian Iqbal Rashid, and Darien Taylor for the TQFF event. A launch in Ottawa at DARC in collaboration with Qu’Art is also in the works for June 4th!

After months of delays Queer Data Studies is finally out in print as of January 2024. It includes a chapter I wrote on data privacy and queer data practices titled “Generated Vulnerability: Male Sex Workers, Third-Party Platforms, & Data Security”.  It was written in the early days of COVID-19 and has taken years to come out, a long duration between writing and publication that is symptomatic of academic publishing unfortunately.  Anthology editor Patrick Keilty, artist/activist Sarah Mangle, and I have proposed a Queer Data roundtable to celebrate the publication of the book as part of the Sexuality Studies Association‘s annual gathering this June in Montreal. Stay tuned for more details.

I also recently learned that I was selected selected as one of six OutHistory Fellows for the inaugural year of the recently launched queer public history award. The OutHistory Fellowship Program is designed to support the presentation of high-quality LGBTQ+ historical exhibits online through the queer public history website OutHistory.org. My research project focuses on Danny Cockerline (1960-1995), an HIV+ sex workers’ rights activist, who remains largely unrecognized for his contributions to the sex workers’ rights movement and HIV/AIDS activism in Canada. The goal of my project is to honour Danny’s memory, reclaim his space within the historical record of the various social movements of which he was an integral member, and create entry points into the primary documents held in his personal papers at the ArQuives in Toronto. The project is tentatively titled Saint Danny: Toronto’s Patron Saint of Hustlers and Rent Boys. This online exhibit will be published on OutHistory in early 2025.

I’ll be teaching a Mini-Course titled “Intro to LGBTQ Studies” at Carleton late this Spring. Carleton’s Mini-Course program is a week long intensive for interested high school students to get a taste of what university courses are like. I’ll be giving students a crash course in the formal study of sexuality and gender diversity since none of them get any substantive (if any) content of this sort in their public school classrooms. Contrary to right-wing christian fundamentalists, none of the first year university students that I have ever taught had any formal education involving sexual and gender diversity. I am offering this course as part of Carleton’s Mini-Course program specifically to undermine the heterosexist nature of public secondary school education in Ontario.

After many COVID-induced delays, my forthcoming book on the Toronto Living With AIDS community cable television program that ran in the early nineties is finally going to press. A collaboration between Archive/Counter-Archive, Vtape, and PUBLIC Books, this anthology of essays, interviews, activist reflections, and video stills will finally be available. I’m launching the book at the Toronto Queer Film Festival‘s 2024 Symposium in mid-March with a roundtable featuring original series contributors Kaspar Saxena, Darien Taylor, and more to be announced!

I made a small contribution to the FAG QC* exhibition that opened at the Archives Gaies du Quebec on December 10th. The AGQ invited forty researchers to select forty objects from the archives to exhibit as part of the organization’s fortieth anniversary. I selected a jacket from Le Club, the largest and most popular gay bar that operated in Vieux Hull throughout the eighties and early nineties. The jacket comes from the Walter Campbell Fonds, the former manager of Le Club and my downstairs neighbour whose materials I rescued and donated to the AGQ last year after he passed away.

Yasmin Nair and I are working on a few things to mark Against Equality‘s 15th anniversary and the 10th anniversary of our anthology Against Equality: Queer Revolution Not Mere Inclusion in 2024. We’ll be writing, reflecting, pod casting, and doing a few interviews so that we can take stock of the contributions that the collective made in its heyday and what remains in the aftermath of queer inclusion in marriage, military, and hate crime law.

In the background I’m also working on numerous things including my manuscript on Lizzie Borden’s 1986 film Working Girls for the Queer Film Classic book series on McGill-Queen’s University Press. I’ve also been keeping busy teaching “Intro to LGBT Studies” and “Public Health & Human Rights” this fall at Carleton University. Lastly, I’m meticulously revising a SSHRC Insight Development Grant titled Sex Worker Self-Authoring in the Canadian Women’s Movement Archive that I’m hoping to secure for the 2024-2026 academic years. Never a moment’s rest!

Over the last seven months I have been on the bargaining team for part-time contract faculty at Carleton University as a member of CUPE 4600. We were fighting for a fair deal for contract faculty like myself who are paid the third worst pay rate in the province of Ontario. After negotiations came to an impasse over intellectual property, TA:student ratios, and salary the union flexed its might and went on strike for a week and a half. Once back at the bargaining table we won full rights to our IP and received an additional bump to the salary offer. We’ll leave the fight on TA:student ratios to the full time faculty union who have much greater leverage than us. I’m very proud of my work with the bargaining team and took heart in being on a picket line with fellow precariously employed contract faculty who make up nearly half of the faculty at Carleton (not to mention all of our TAs/RAs!). The corporate university is a nasty beast and the fight continues, but I am happy to celebrate the small victories.

The SSA’s Annual Conference is quickly approaching!  From May 29-31 I’ll be presiding over the last conference that will take place under my tenure as the association’s Chair and a member of its executive. It’s our first in-person conference in three years and I am excited to meet with and learn from my colleagues before passing the torch to incoming Chair Ricky Varghese. The keynote from Andil Gosine and award plenary organized by Gary Kinsman will be a real treat!

My work collaborating with Vtape as part of Archive/Counter-Archive is is coming to a conclusion.  We are soon to release a classroom guide for teachers interested in utilizing material from the community cable television program Toronto Living With AIDS (1990-91). The creation of the guide was spearheaded by Axelle Demus and Chloë Brushwood Rose. This fall, Vtape will also publish a chapbook on Toronto Living With AIDS that will including my essay on the series from JumpCut, transcripts of all the interviews I conducted with surviving contributors to the series, and short reflections on each tape written by contemporary artists and activists thinking about the legacy of the community cable television series. Keep an eye out for this in the fall!

I’ll spend the Summer hiding out at an off grid cabin so that I can finish my manuscript on Lizzie Borden’s 1986 film Working Girls for the queer film classics book series edited by Tom Waugh and Matthew Hays. It has been a long time coming, but COVID chaos has delayed this manuscript by a year and a half. I am looking forward to some peace and quiet so I can finish this off and get it out into the world. Stay tuned!

I’m wrapping up my last semester as Chair of the Sexuality Studies Association where I’m busily working on co-organizing the last annual conference under my leadership.  The call for proposals is out and available, with a deadline of January 15, 2023.

This winter I will continue teaching on contract at Carleton where I’m scheduled to teach the second half of Intro to LGBT Studies to first year students and a course on sex work titled Sex for Sale to second and third year students. I’m excited to be back in the classroom and I have a great combination of guest speakers and archival field trips planned for this semester!

Emma McKenna and I have been invited to share the results of our study on sex workers’ tax filing habits and access to social safety nets in Ottawa-Gatineau at Carleton as part of an international roundtable: Sex Work and COVID-19 in Global Perspective. This online event will take place on zoom at 5pm EST on January 19th. More details will be posted as they become available!

The article I’ve been working on for the past five years with my colleague Gary Lee Pelletier titled “Here, Queer, and Paranoid! On Acrid Sociality and Collaborating Otherwise” is now published in QED Journal (Vol 9 No 2). The article theorizes a particular form of  destructive queer sociality we name as “acrid sociality,” trying to figure out why queers treat each other so poorly in activist spaces.  This has been a long time coming, but we are happy that it is finally in print!

Lastly, I continue my work with the part-time faculty union at Carleton, CUPE 4600. In addition to sitting on the Executive Board as the Recording Secretary, I am also on the negotiating team fighting for an improved collective agreement and fair deal for part-time faculty. Carleton remains the third worst employer in Ontario in terms of wage competitiveness for part-time faculty and we are fighting to change that among other priorities this round of bargaining.

In September I began teaching at Carleton as a sessional contract instructor for the third year. I’m teaching a first year LGBT Studies seminar and a human rights course on Gender, Sexuality, and National Security. I also continue to serve my part-time faculty union at Carleton by sitting on the Executive Board as well as the negotiating team fighting for an improved collective agreement and fair deal for part-time faculty. Carleton is the third worst employer in Ontario in terms of wage competitiveness for part-time faculty and we are fighting to change that among other priorities this round of bargaining.

In June I penned a short piece for a pride-focused issue of the online magazine maintained by Go Freddie. While they failed to publish it before or during pride, my piece titled “Sex Work & Remembering Queer Whoreganizers This Pride Season” made it to press by the end of July. It’s a personal reflection on how boring and awful (ie. commercial) pride is and how queers and sex workers who once had a lot in common politically no longer do. I wonder aloud what Danny Cockerline (1960-1995), a gay activist co-founder of the Canadian Organization for the Rights of Prostitutes, Maggie’s, and the Prostitutes Safe Sex Project would think of both commercialized defanged pride celebrations and the current state of sex worker activism in Canada. (image of Danny from Epicene ‘zine circa early 90s)

Looking forward, an article I’ve been working on for the past five years with my colleague Gary Lee Pelletier titled “Here, Queer, and Paranoid! On Acrid Sociality and Collaborating Otherwise” is in the final copyediting phase with QED Journal. The article theorizes a particular form of  destructive queer sociality we name as “acrid sociality”, trying to figure out why queers treat each other so poorly in activist spaces.  It should be out this winter!

Lastly, I’m entering my last two semesters as Chair of the Sexuality Studies Association where I’m busily working on professionalizing the association, co-organizing my last annual conference as the associations Chair that will take place in May 2023, and preparing to hand over the reins to my very capable colleagues!

The Sexuality Studies Association‘s annual Conference was held virtually this year, with an eye towards finally returning to some form of in-person conferencing in the spring of 2023.  We had solid attendance at our keynote and plenary events, and our virtual asynchronous conference website was ablaze with comments and feedback on all papers. At the AGM we elected new board members and made a big step as an organization to officially incorporate. This will allow us to do some of the professionalization work the association greatly needs and I am happy to be leaving the association in better shape, with more sustainable structures in place, when I finish my tenure as Chair in May of 2023.

Just days ago I presented my research on “orphaned” HIV/AIDS tapes authored by gay men in the ’80s and ’90s who have since died at the Orphan Film Symposium hosted at Concordia University and organized by both Concordia and New York University. The symposium’s theme was on Counter-Archives, which was fitting as I was presenting on my research that came out of the “AIDS Activist Media” case study that is part of the Archive/Counter-Archive research project where I completed my postdoc. My talk was recorded and should be made available online in the near future.

Renowned Canadian artist collective General Idea is currently exhibiting a grand retrospective at National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. As a primer for the uninitiated, I conducted a brief interview with AA Bronson of GI for Positive Side. The interview  titled “Art AIDS, & AA Bronson: Artist AA Bronson Talks to Ryan Conrad About Art and HIV” should be out in print and digital any day now.  The exhibition is open through November 20th, 2022.

This coming academic year I’ll be teaching a full 2/2 course load at Carleton: Intro to LGBTQ Studies (Fall/Winter); Sexuality, Gender, & Security (Fall); Sex for Sale (Winter). The courses span the Sexuality Studies, Women and Gender Studies, and Human Rights programs at Carleton, most of which fall under the Feminist Institute of Social Transformation where I am also currently an Adjunct Research Faculty member.

Otherwise I’m just writing, researching, preparing new syllabi, and editing video for the rest of the summer!