Sarah Wingrove

Dr Sarah Wingrove


Associate Tutor
PhD

Academic and research departments

Literature and Languages, Sociology.

About

Areas of specialism

Anne Lister (1791-1840); Social History; Gender and Sexuality; Pilgrimage Studies

My qualifications

2025
Interdisciplinary PhD in English Literature and Sociology
University of Surrey
2019
MA in Film Studies
King's College London
2017
BA in Film Studies with PTY
(PTY at Warner Brothers Production TV UK.)
University of Surrey

Research

Research interests

Conference Papers

British Sociological Association (23rd April 2025), University of Manchester
“Negotiating Heteromasculinity: Straight Men Who Dance with Men (MDM) in UK Swing 

Anne Lister Society Meeting (4th April 2025), Northwestern University  
“‘left Ann in the ladies room’: Negotiating the Public Sphere and Anne Lister’s (and Ann Walker’s) Train Travel”. 
Also presented at the Railways in Literature seminar for the Institute of Historical Research (29th May 2025). 

Anne Lister Research Summit (1st February 2025), Packed with Potential  
“Reading for Pleasure: Sexuality, Morality, and the Erotic Literature of Anne Lister” with Professor Deborah Kamen and Jann Kraus. Available at: https://youtu.be/hCns1AiYzfM?si=byp3dz8GIrICACOJ 

Anne Lister Society Meeting (6th April 2024), Northwestern University  
“Infectious Itineraries: The Impact of the Cholera and Covid-19 Pandemics on Anne Lister and Lister Enthusiasts’ Travel Behaviours in Britain”.

Queer and Trans Philologies (22nd March 2024), University of Cambridge  
‘“a neat place w[hi]ch you pass thro’: the evolving orthography of Anne Lister’s early travel writing”

Truth on the Line (17th May 2022), University of Surrey  
“Cracking the Spine: Querying Ethical Engagement with Anne Lister’s Archive”

Anne Lister Society Meeting (8th April 2022), Northwestern University  
“Queer Pilgrimage: Anne Lister and Identity Tourism”Also presented at Lesbian Lives (23rd March 2024).

Lesbian Lives (4th March 2022), University College Cork 
“The Effects of ‘Anne-dom’: The Collaborative Production and Dissemination of New Information on Anne Lister”

120BPM Symposium (11th May 2019), King’s College London.
“Screwing up the Sheets: Sex on the Death Bed in 120 BPM”. 

Future Sex (28th June 2018), University of Surrey.
“Representing Queer Spaces on Screen and the Future of London’s LGBT+ Venues”. 

Effects of Anne-dom: The Collaborative Production & Dissemination of New Information on Anne Lister

Teaching

Publications

Wingrove, S. (2026) Anne Lister and Queer Pilgrimage Beyond the Historic House

Forthcoming in The Cambridge Companion to Anne Lister (Roulston and Gonda, eds). 

Wingrove, S. (2024) Review of Decoding Anne Lister: From the Archives to ‘Gentleman Jack’ (Chris Roulston and Caroline Gonda, 2023)

Published in the journal, Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies. 

Wingrove, S. (2023) The Cancellation of Gentleman Jack: A Year On

Written for the Women's History Network. 

Wingrove, S. (2022) Queer Pilgrimage: Anne Lister, Gentleman Jack, and Locating Community

Queer  pilgrimage  is  a  journey  made  by  an  individual  or  a  group  to  a  location,  permanent  or  transitory,  which  bears  relevance  to  the  lives,  cultures,  and  politics  of  queer  people.  It  is  undertaken  for  the  pilgrim/s  to  feel  an  affinity  with  the  space  itself   through   emotional   and/or   physical   proximity.   Since   Gentleman  Jack  first  aired  in  2019,  acts  of  queer  pilgrimage  have  increased  substantially  to  key  sites  associated  with  Lister,  including  to  Shibden  Hall  (her  ancestral  home),  Halifax,  York,  and  beyond.  In  this  article  I  draw  upon  two  forms  of  queer  pilgrimage  in  relation  to  Anne  Lister.  The  first  is  this  substantial  increase  in  tourism  and  attraction  to  sites  associated  with  Lister.  The  second  is  the  queer  pilgrimage  Lister  herself  undertook  in  1822  to  the  Ladies  of  Llangollen  at  their  home,  Plas  Newydd.In  drawing  out  these  two  comparatively,  I  propose  that  historical  and  contemporary  forms  of  queer  pilgrimage  have  more  in  common  than  may  initially  be  apparent,  namely  a  commonality  between  the  queer  pilgrims  of  the  19th  and  21st  centuries  around  a  desire  for  community.

Wingrove, S. (2022) Beyond ‘la petite mort’ – sex and death in 120 BPM

ABSTRACT

Recent French films have sparked discussion about how we under-stand the AIDS crisis and how that historical understanding informs present-day views of HIV/AIDS in France and further afield. An example of this, Robin Campillo’s period piece, 120 Battements par minute (2017), explicitly depicts ‘la petite mort’ and the connection between orgasm and demise through the experiences of Parisian ACT UP members during the height of the AIDS crisis in the early 1990s. The following article argues that the three sex scenes in 120 BPM are pivotal points in the narrative which quite literally raise the dead, connecting the characters to lost lovers, members of their community and their past selves. Through this, I analyse how these scenes interact with the film’s re-enactment scenes of protest actions in the 1990s, through their choreography, dialogue, duration, and the images of sexual acts themselves. To do this, I identify how the film troubles and recon-structs ideas of death in AIDS cinema through the recognition of the HIV+ individual as one who will not be desexualised by the virus, even if they are dying. This article will scrutinise and query the relationship between the sex scene, mortality, and memory in 120 BPM.

RÉSUMÉ

Récemment, le cinéma français a suscité des débats autour de notre compréhension de la crise du SIDA, en particulier comment cette vision historique éclaire notre point de vue actuel sur le VIH et le SIDA en France mais aussi à l’étranger. Un exemple de cette production cinématique est le film d’époque de Robin Campillo, 120 Battements par minute (2017), qui représente ‘la petite mort’ et la connexion entre l’orgasme et la mort, en regardant les expériences des mem-bres parisiens du groupe « ACT UP » au sommet de la crise du SIDA au début des années 1990. L’article qui suit affirme que les trois scènes de sexe dans 120 BPM sont des points clés dans l’histoire qui ressus-citent littéralement les morts, en liant les personnages aux amours perdus, aux membres de leur communauté, et aux anciennes ver-sions d’eux-mêmes. En avançant cette thèse, j’analyse les interactions de ces scènes-ci et leur chorégraphie, dialogue, durée, ainsi que leur représentation des actes, avec les scènes de manifestation qui ten-tent de recréer certaines manifestations des années 1990. J’analyse la manière dont le film dérange et reconstruit les idées de mort dans le cinéma de la crise du SIDA par la reconnaissance de l’individu séropositif en tant que quelqu’un qui ne sera pas désexualisé par le virus, malgré le fait qu’il est mourant. Cet article examinera et inter-rogera les liens entre le scène de sexe, la mortalité, et le souvenir dans 120 BPM.