November-December 2020
In her new book Before Trans, Rachel Mesch adroitly walks the methodological tightrope of examining historical characters through the lens of transgender analysis, yet accepting their gender originality. Her writing is theoretically savvy without being academically ponderous.
More
Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Steuben joined the Prussian army when he was seventeen, eventually becoming an aide-de-camp to Frederick the Great, who was also rumored to have had homosexual leanings. (The conversation of Frederick’s inner court circle was peppered with homoerotic banter, and his residence included a Friendship Temple celebrating the homoerotic attachments of Greek antiquity).
More
FOR FANS of cabaret performance (bless them!), Mark Nadler is a familiar name. He has performed in virtually every cabaret venue in New York City and has toured the world, winning many awards and rave reviews.
More
Few of Mistral’s poems have been translated, and she is not as well-known as her fellow Chilean and Nobel Prize winner, Pablo Neruda. But her letters to Doris are now available in English, edited and translated by Velma García-Gorena in 2018, so perhaps her reputation is growing in the English-speaking world.
More
ÉRIC JOURDAN’S Les mauvais anges, or Wicked Angels, was banned in France shortly after its publication in 1955, and the ban was only lifted thirty years later. The story of a sadomasochistic amour fou between two teenage boys was translated into English by Richard Howard in 1963 and titled Two.
MoreOpinions from our readers.
MoreBY “MYTHOLOGIES” I mean something like what Roland Barthes had in mind in his book by that name: not myths in the sense of tall tales but something closer to metaphors or theories used to explain natural or social phenomena. Modern mythologies tend to be wrapped in a patina of science, or perhaps pseudo-science, as various accounts arise to explain, say, homosexuality or gender variance.
MoreTHE VOTE is a four-part PBS docuseries chronicling the women’s suffrage movement in the U.S. and their demands for national voting rights. The series’ premier broadcast this past July was timed as a prelude to August’s 100th anniversary celebration of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which states: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
More
