The hospital has complex, varied and ambivalent histories in relation to queerness and LGBTQIA+ identities and communities. The 2013 Special Issue of the Journal of Medical Humanities “Queer in the Clinic” (eds. Lance Wahlert and Autumn Fiester), for instance, charts these diverse histories, mapping both the violence and non-inclusivity experienced historically by queer people in diverse clinical environments, as well as the ways in which hospital spaces have constituted sites for resistance, community, and even erotic pleasure. This talk explores some of these histories and contexts, arguing that such histories might help us to develop roadmaps to, and blueprints of, queer hospital futures. What happens when queer theory comes into contact with hospital architecture and design? How might queering the hospital be liberating for everyone? This talk also introduces the emerging project “Queer Lives of the Hospital: An Archive of LGBTQIA+ Experiences of Healthcare Environments” at Lancaster University.

Dr Benjamin Dalton is Lecturer in French Studies in the School of Global Affairs at Lancaster University. His research is situated at the intersections of French Studies and the Medical Humanities. His current project explores how French and Francophone philosophy and cultural production can help us to imagine the hospitals of the future. From this project, he has published on radical re-imaginings of the hospital in the work of Catherine Malabou (Essays in French Literature and Culture, 2021), Jean-Luc Nancy (Nottingham French Studies, 2023), Paul B. Preciado (The Senses & Society, 2024), Maylis de Kerangal (Film-Philosophy, 2024), and Anne Dufourmantelle (Paragraph, 2024). His first monograph on Catherine Malabou is under contract with Edinburgh University Press, and he is also currently co-editing publications on “Queer Medical Humanities” alongside Chase Ledin and Maurice Nagington; and publications on the hospital in contemporary French and Francophone culture alongside Áine Larkin.