HomeAuthor: John D'Emilio

Author: John D'Emilio

John D'Emilio

Current Issue:
Age of Enlightenment
Special 25th Anniversary Book
Features From Current Issue

Essays

The Paris Cruising Scene in 1750

IF YOU HAVE VISITED Paris in the last five years, you may have seen a plaque embedded in the pavement in the pedestrianized blocks of rue Montorgueil that commemorates Bruno Lenoir and Jean Diot, the last men executed for sodomy (not homosexuality, as the inscription indicates) in France, on 6 July 1750. This plaque has undoubtedly provoked not only horror and sorrow but also questions in the minds of natives and tourists alike.

Essays

The Short Historic Life of Randy Shilts

THE CAREER of Randy Shilts, the openly gay journalist who wrote three of the most widely read books dealing with gay life in the United States, seems to have been more or less synonymous with the history of San Francisco from his arrival in 1976 to his death in 1994—or such is the impression left by Andrew E. Stoner in his new biography.

Essays

Cyrano’s Sodomitical Circle

The ringleader of these “forceful minds” (esprits forts) was the gifted poet Théophile de Viau. His blasphemies and boasts of “unnatural” sex shocked the godly, in particular two Jesuits who intrigued to get him banished from Paris. His exile was eased by the companionship of Jacques Des Barreaux, a nineteen-year-old of surpassing beauty and intelligence.

Features

‘The sapphic is far from a site of silence.’

The G&LR talks with the author of The Sexuality of History, Susan S. Lanser, professor emerita of English, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Comparative Literature at Brandeis University, and a specialist in 18th-century European literature, with a focus on women writers and issues related to gender and sexuality.
Blog
1. August 20, 2019 Are You the One: Come One Come Most — What is Missing in MTV’s Sexually Fluid Reality Show
2. August 19, 2019 My Years in a Catholic Seminary: 1967-1974
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