Rommi Smith: visiting scholar City University New York

Rommi Smith- poet, playwright, performer and John Barnard Scholar at The University of Leeds - gives a lecture-as-performance set to music during her visiting Scholarship at City University New York.

Rommi is honoured and delighted to be invited to be a visiting scholar at City University New York (CUNY) this spring. She will be writing and researching in New York City for the next three months.

As part of her visit, Rommi delivered a lecture-as-performance set to music at The Martin Segal Theater, Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, New York on 22nd February 2017.  The Map Where We Meet and Other Queer Stories: writers as cartographers on the crossroads of change.The Graduate Center (in partnership with the Louis Armstrong Archive), is organising a symposium around key themes connected to Rommi's scholarship. She will speak alongside other researchers exploring sister themes in their own research. As part of this event, she has been invited to lead a practice-led, interdisciplinary, creative writing workshop in which she will explore methodologies she has both developed and is utilising as part of the creative element of her doctoral practice. 

The event was organised and promoted by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS). CLAGS is the first university-based LGBTQ research centre in the United States committed to nurturing cutting-edge scholarship, organizing events for examining and affirming LGBTQ lives, fostering network-building among academics, artists, activists, policy makers, and community members, and providing fellowships that promote reflection on queer pasts, presents, and futures'. (CLAGS' website, 2017)