Briefe über die Galantieren von Berlin has none of the militancy of the Encyclopedists. The polemic intent of the latter is charted by Robert Darnton in his Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (1995). The Austrian officer’s letters are leagues behind a work such as Thérèse philosophe (1748), for instance, in which free thinking is associated with sexuality.
More
THIS YEAR marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of Cyrano de Bergerac, but not the one you have in mind. Edmond Rostand’s hit play of 1897 invented an ultra-Romantic Cyrano, a magniloquent swashbuckler with a promontory of a nose. Hopelessly in love with his cousin Roxane, he sacrifices himself so she may wed the man she loves, ghost-writing his rival’s amorous declarations. This Cyrano—master duelist, improvisatory poet, independent spirit—has entered the popular imagination and spawned scores of imitations.
More
In The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History, which will be published by NYU Press in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the Riots, I present 200 documents from 1965 to 1973 that illuminate developments before, during, and after the LGBT movement’s most important turning point.
More
Over time, the marches have turned into parades. Radical political critiques have been rendered invisible through an æsthetic of celebration.
More
The Golden Anniversary approaches, forging ahead like a juggernaut smashing every other puny bit of queer history along the way.
More
THERE ARE several strands running through Kembrew McLeod’s tumultuous history of the art scene in lower Manhattan from the 1960s to the late ’70s—a scene that McLeod believes has had an outsize influence on American and global culture.
More
Trans marginalization in post-Trump feminism is embedded in the continued use of gender-essentialist rhetoric and symbols. Slogans such as “Pussy Power,” “Pussy Grabs Back,” and the ubiquitous pink pussy hats worn by a large proportion of women attending the [Women’s March on January 21, 2017] centered genitals as the primary symbol of womanhood.
MoreHOW DID the gay liberation movement of the 1970s evolve into the “LGBTQ” lineup of letters that we have today, and what are the implications for building a movement out of such divergent sexual and gender minorities? I offer here a thumbnail history of this accretion process from Stonewall to today.
More
Jim Elledge’s The Boys of Fairy Town brings to life this world in all its multiracial diversity from Chicago’s 1837 incorporation until the 1940s: sometimes hidden in the shadows, but often all the rage and thriving openly.
More
PIERRE LOTI was a 19th-century French writer who was admired by writers as various as Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Willa Cather, and Marcel Proust, but is now almost totally forgotten.
More
