Homosexuality and Literature

Epistolography (Blackwell Companion to Ancient Sexuality)

by Owen Hodkinson

draft chapter (currently 1000 words too long). comments only welcome if they involve removing not adding!

Polish Literature

by Alessandro Amenta

glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture, April 9, 2004

Thomas Long, AIDS and American Apocalypticism: The Cultural Semiotics of an Epidemic (Book Review)

by James C. Vlisides

“‘The Spirit of Fornication, Whom the Children of the Hellenes Used to Call Eros’: Problematizations of Male Homoeroticism in Late Antique Monastic Milieus.” In New Europe College Yearbook 2002-2003. Ed. Irina Vainovski-Mihai, 239-79. Bucharest: New Europe College, 2005

by Cristian-Nicolae Gaşpar

Revised version published as “‘The Spirit of Fornication, Whom the Children of the Hellenes Used to Call Eros’: Male Homoeroticism and the Rhetoric of Chastity in the Letters of Nilus of Ancyra.” In Chastity: A Study in Perception, Ideals, Opposition. Ed. Nancy van Deusen, 151-83. Leiden: Brill, 2008.

“‘The Spirit of Fornication, Whom the Children of the Hellenes Used to Call Eros’: Male Homoeroticism and the Rhetoric of Chastity in the Letters of Nilus of Ancyra.” In Chastity: A Study in Perception, Ideals, Opposition. Ed. Nancy van Deusen, 151-83. Leiden: Brill, 2008.

by Cristian-Nicolae Gaşpar

The bad homosexual: Genet’s perverse homo-politics

by Elizabeth Stephens

Sexualities. January 2012 15: 28-41

Although widely recognized as pivotal texts in the history of homosexual literature, Genet’s novels occupied a largely... more Although widely recognized as pivotal texts in the history of homosexual literature, Genet’s novels occupied a largely negative position within gay criticism of the 1990s, by which they were seen to reproduce heterocentric, even homophobic assumptions about same-sex desire. This article argues that Genet’s contentious decision to articulate homoerotic desire within the space of a heteronormative language is one necessitated by the structural constraints of language itself. Metafictively drawing attention to the absence of a language in which to communicate homoerotic desire, Genet represents his narrators and characters as locked in a closet of heteronormative language. His strategic response to this silencing is to appropriate and recontextualize heterocentric and homophobic discourses in ways that problematize their assumed heteronormativity. In contrast to the gay critical focus on whether Genet himself has internalized heteronormative assumptions about his sexuality and subjectivity, Genet’s texts remind us that the question is not simply an individualized one of what the author him/herself thinks, but rather how s/he might articulate expressions of desire within a language that seems designed to erase such expressions of difference.

Thinking Globally and Reading Diversely: Issues of Gay and Lesbian International Literature for Young Adults

by Amy Elliott

-Presented at the 28th Annual College of Communication and Information Research Symposium, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Knoxville, TN. Feb. 2006.
-Written at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
-Won Best Master's Research Award, 28th Annual University of Tennessee College of Communication and Information Research Symposium.
-Won School of Information Sciences Best Paper Award, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2006.

Young adults need information on issues of sexuality in a way that relates to them. This becomes particularly... more Young adults need information on issues of sexuality in a way that relates to them. This becomes particularly important to young adults who identity as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or queer, as well as those who may be questioning their sexualities. This paper examines one form of information: the young adult novel. It looks at the presence, lack, and need for international GLBTQ young adult literature. It surveys the genre’s past and present and speculates on its future. It discovers that although publishers have significantly increased GLBTQ and international GLBTQ young adult literature in the last few years, there is still quite a gap to be filled.

PARENTS'HETEROSEXISM AND CHILDREN'S ATTITUDES TOWARD PEOPLE WITH AIDS

by Jeralynn Cossman

Black Gay Masculinity As Literary Device In the Poetry of Essex Hemphill, Reginald Harris, and Carl Phillips

by Nicole Ashanti McFarlane

Hierarchical Relations in David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly and in David Mamet’s Oleanna

by Frederic Derose-Jacques

Representing ancient Masculinity in film, TV and contemporary fiction

by sarah walton

Paper delivered at Warwick University, Masculinity Workshop, Sept 2011

Chelsea: The Death of a Gay Neighborhood, Murdered by Neo-Hetero-Homophobes

by Michael Carosone

Co-authored with Joseph LoGiudice. Re-published in Gay City News (New York City, November 8, 2011).

A Glimpse Behind the Screen: Tijuana Bibles and the pornographic re-imagining of Hollywood.

by Phillip Smith

Scandal in Culture Conference, Wroclaw University, 7th November 2011

Co-authoured with Ellen Wright (UEA)

A Glimpse Behind the Screen: Tijuana Bibles and the pornographic re-imagining of Hollywood.

Hollywood’s... more A Glimpse Behind the Screen: Tijuana Bibles and the pornographic re-imagining of Hollywood.

Hollywood’s early star system relied on a fine balance of carefully controlled star personas and a fan culture of scandal and rumour; while the studios were increasingly required to present and defend a near puritanical image for all their stars, they were simultaneously sex symbols, and audiences craved insights into the private lives they imagined for their chosen stars. Into this world came the ‘Tijuana bibles’.
Illicit, explicit and illegal, the ‘8 pagers’ - comic art pornography of the 20’s - 50’s - revelled in frequently portraying graphic sex acts with little narrative justification, able to feature images, subjects and language impossible in the age of the Hayes Office, while engaging openly with the narratives of scandal and rumour of the time. Miscegenation, bestiality, homosexuality; from Orphan Annie to Donald Duck, Mae West to Clark Gable, these poorly printed booklets were a mafia controlled mass medium which flourished in America throughout the depression and beyond.
These film star Tijuana narratives unhampered by an official studio ‘line’, the worry of litigation, or any notion of taste or decency; put a perverse spin on celebrity identities, delivering on what Hollywood could only hint at, offering their readers a furtive peep behind the curtains of celebrity and the cinema screen, reflect a public obsession with celebrity and Hollywood scandal – the dirtier the better.

Homophobic bullying and same-sex desire in Anglo-American schools: An historical perspective

by Andrew Wackerfuss

Journal of Gay and Lesbian Social Services, Vol 19 No. 3-4, 2008. p139-155.

Homophobic bullying has come into new prominence given its alleged connection to several recent acts of school... more Homophobic bullying has come into new prominence given its alleged connection to several recent acts of school violence. This article traces the historiography of homophobic bullying, both in recent years and with reference to the original era of concern over this problem, Victorian England. As can be seen through novels and autobiographies of school life, Victorians linked bullying and sexuality in several important ways. Their traditional understanding actually supported many acts of bullying as a way to teach boys accepted codes of masculine behavior. In the late- and post-Victorian era, growing scientific investigation into human sexual behavior and increasing openness about homosexuality changed this picture to some extent, leading writers to understand bullying as a product of the bully's repressed same-sex desires. Both these views persist today and provide a stimulating context for present-day investigations of homophobic bullying.

(Reprinted in: "Homophobic Bullying," J.T. Sears, ed. 2008)

No Longer Jew or Greek, Male or Female, Gay or Straight

by Devin Berry

Queer Ecology

by Tim Morton

Published in PMLA 125.2 (March 2010), 1–19.

Queerness is not epiphenomenal to “life” but structural to it. Queerness is not epiphenomenal to “life” but structural to it.

Ruiz Laboy, Ángel Antonio. "El tiempo de los escarabajos". Chasqui 40.1 (2011): 294.

by Carmen Rabell

Wilde y el enigma de la Esfinge

by José Angel García Landa

Wilde and the Riddle of the Sphinx
   
Oscar Wilde's essay "The Critic as Artist" is... more Wilde and the Riddle of the Sphinx
   
Oscar Wilde's essay "The Critic as Artist" is shown to foreshadow some key concepts of poststructuralist interpretive theory - such as the necessary interplay of blindness and insight in criticism (Lacan, Paul de Man), or the retroactive effect of interpretation in the construction of the work. More specifically, Wilde's reading of the riddle of the Sphinx in a passage of this work both theorizes and dramatizes the paradoxical relationship between blindness and insight, in the shape of an ironic prophecy which can be read as Wilde's announcement of his own tragic downfall - in which there is an element of compulsive acting out that has been noted by a number of previous critics. That is, Wilde's Sphinx is used as the vehicle of a riddle about Wilde himself, and is an emblem of his own ambivalent attitude toward the public revelation of his homosexuality.

Note: Downloadable document is in Spanish.

Keywords: Wilde, Sphinx, Hermeneutics, Interpretation, Lacan, Criticism

El Estado binario y viril colombiano como reflejo del discurso higiénico de principios del siglo XX

by Ana Milena Coral Díaz

Autora: Ana Milena Coral-Diaz


Palabras clave: Homosexualidad, occidente, hetero normatividad, discurso higiénico, educación, Decreto 2277 de 1977, biopolítica, Estado binario y viril, ley del contagio, pederastia y peligro

El trabajo examina el trasfondo de una política heterocéntrica implementada en Colombia en el año de 1979 con el... more El trabajo examina el trasfondo de una política heterocéntrica implementada en Colombia en el año de 1979 con el decreto 2277 que establece las causales de mala conducta para docentes, entre las cuales se encuentra “el homosexualismo o la práctica de aberraciones sexuales”. Parte para su análisis, de los supuestos occidentales sobre la práctica de una sexualidad de centro y así mismo, plantea como  sustento para la prohibición de una orientación homosexual para docentes de escuelas públicas, el discurso de las sexualidades periféricas. Examina en este contexto dos supuestos sobre los cuales se justificaría la adopción de la norma, esto es, la ley del contagio y los supuestos de pederastia y peligro asociados a la docencia desde una orientación homosexual.
El artículo aborda la construcción del Estado colombiano, como binario y viril en la búsqueda de ciudadanos que correspondan con el ideal civilizatorio occidental en el que la heterosexualidad se convierte en premisa de vida. Parte el estudio del discurso higiénico implementado en Colombia a principios del siglo XX  que se concentraba en tres  objetivos: la readecuación del espacio urbano –particularmente los barrios obreros–; las instituciones escolares como invernaderos para el cultivo de tiernas plantas infantiles, y la lucha contra la chicha, la prostitución y las enfermedades venéreas, para la civilización-modernización del pueblo colombiano. Sin embargo, particularmente es la educación impartida en las instituciones educativas públicas, el dispositivo que habría de moldear la conducta de ciudadanos con base en un modelo heteronormativo a través de  un cuerpo civilizado y la adecuación de la conducta a las expectativas de género elaboradas en occidente.

A new trend? An independent woman and the vampire myth

by Dagmara Hadyna

The aim of this paper is to analyse parallels between Rice’s book series and the latest inclinations to represent a... more The aim of this paper is to analyse parallels between Rice’s book series and the latest inclinations to represent a powerful woman through the vampire myth.