Writing Strange
NEAR THE END of this brilliant study, Kevin Ohi draws a comparison that is surprisingly down-to-earth in a book that expresses complex ideas in the highly technical language of contemporary literary criticism and queer studies.
MoreBrowsing: September-October 2011
September-October 2011
Blog Posts
Men under Arms with Bonaparte
THE FIRST THING I liked about this book was its interpretative honesty. It is a work of solid historiography and level-headed literary analysis.
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No Fags in the Foxhole
[This] memoir is recommended reading for anyone who might think that a gay soldier might be any less devoted, dedicated, or deserving of military honors than a straight one. In fact, the former carries more invisible scars than their heterosexual brothers and sisters in arms.
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The Making of a Film Archive Activist
It is to Michael Schiavi’s credit that he manages in Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo to give equal weight to both sides of Russo’s work: as a student of Hollywood and as a gay activist. …
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I Rise in Flames, Cried the Phoenix
The World of Tennessee Williams Revised and Updated Edition by Richard Freeman Leavitt and Kenneth Holditch Hansen Publishing Group LLC 118 pages, $14.95 Tennessee Williams in Provincetown by David…More
What Became of The Intersexes?
Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson (1858-1942), although known to a few gay scholars, is not exactly a household name. This is not surprising, if only because he always hid behind a pseudonym when writing his gay-themed works. He also lied about his age and enjoyed hoodwinking an audience whenever he could. More to the point, his works are to this day not easy to find. The general outlines of his life are established, though details are hard to come by. …
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Gender Bending in Early Postcards
This article focuses on commercially produced postcards that were printed in large numbers and circulated widely throughout the world. Real photo postcards, in contrast, whether produced by professional or amateur photographers, also provide valuable insights into social history but were most often printed in limited numbers, and their images can be difficult if not impossible to identify. … The postcards reproduced here are from my personal collection, and my hope is that they will offer a flavor of the shifting sex and gender ideas of this era.
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Simeon Solomon’s Shame-Free Art
IN THE HISTORY of homosexuality in Victorian England, Simeon Solomon has re-emerged as a significant figure. A Jewish painter among the Pre-Raphaelites, Solomon was arrested on February 11, 1873, in a public urinal with another man and charged with attempted sodomy. …
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The Natural Thoreau
IN RECENT YEARS, biographers of Henry David Thoreau have begun to speculate more openly about the sexual orientation of “the patron saint of environmentalists,” a man who never married in an age when marriage was de rigueur. …
MoreThe Love Letters of J. J. Winckelmann
THE ACHIEVEMENTS of antiquarian and art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768), the representative gay æsthete of his century, are not in dispute. Winckelmann, the son of a northern German cobbler, moved to Rome and became the librarian of Cardinal Albani and curator of Roman antiquities in the Vatican. He was the leading spirit behind the first wave of Neoclassicism, an international art movement centered in Rome. Arguably he created the discipline of art history as we now know it, transforming the traditional, dry archaeological description into fervent and poetic art criticism that expressed his love of Greco-Roman beauty.
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