Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons^™

Overture: Love—Love Is A Pink Cake, Or, Queering Chopin In Times Of Homophobia, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Abstract:

An introduction to the three essays included in this section. The article highlights the right to know whether Chopin was gay and contextualizes this inquiry in a very long and pervasive historiographical tradition, essentially two-hundred years long, dedicated to examine Chopin sexual orientation, on the one hand, and on the other the more recent tradition of queering western classical music composers. The main point is not to demonstrate categorically that Chopin was “gay” (a relative, modern identity marker in any case) but rather to highlight the discourses that have presented him as unequivocally heterosexual.

Resumen:

Una introducción a los …

Setting The Terms Of Our Own Visibility A Conversation Between Sam Feder And Alexandra Juhasz On Trans Activist Media In The United States, Alexandra Juhasz

Publications and Research

In the summer of 2016, I sat down at my computer and Skyped with my friend and fellow queer media activist Sam Feder about their film, Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen. What follows is a highly edited transcript of our conversation, paying particular attention to Sam’s core research findings about trans representational history and how their findings might align with their processes and goals as a trans activist media maker committed to telling this complex story.

Rethinking Early Modern Sexuality Through Race, Mario Digangi

Publications and Research

When English Literary Renaissance launched in 1971, early modern sexuality studies did not exist. Then again, neither did the feminist, new historicist, post-colonialist, or other “political” approaches that have significantly reshaped early modern literary studies (and the humanities) over the last forty years. Yet whereas feminist and new historicist essays began thickly to populate the pages of Renaissance journals in the early 1980s, studies of sexuality—and of lesbian, gay, or queer sexualities in particular—were slow to arrive. During the 1980s, ELR published only a handful of essays that centered on sex or eroticism. The first explicit treatment of homoeroticism in …

Representations Of García Lorca In American Poetry: Articulating And Floating Metaphor Of The Historical Connections Between Spain And The United States, Carlos Aguasaco

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Woman Energy: How Our Lesbian Past Informs Our Lesbian Future, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

Sinister Wisdom Issue 3, published the year 1977 holds an essay by poet Adrienne Rich, titled, “It is the lesbian in us...”; The cover of the same issue has art by photographer Tee Corinne. Sinister Wisdom is a multicultural lesbian literary and art journal. This non-fiction creative essay written by Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz reflects on the first year of Sinister Wisdom's publication as a celebration of 40 years through this special edition anniversary print for which only 1000 have been printed. The essay remarks on the shift in lesbian identity and community and the potential impact of the Sinister Wisdom journal …

Disciplines, Institutions—And Desires, Will Stockton, Mario Digangi, Ruth Mazo Karras, Melissa E. Sanchez

Publications and Research

Will Stockton: I would like to begin by asking you to consider the chiasmus under which we gather: “Desiring History and Historicizing Desire.” The chiasmus focuses our attention on the crossing of two terms, each with noun and verb forms their grammatical flexibility indexed, perhaps, to the methodological flexibility of the fields in which most of us work: early modern (here both Renaissance and late-medieval) queer and/or sexuality studies. Talk a bit about the definitions of desir/e/ing and histor/y/icizing, and the relation of these terms to the periodization and thematization of your and our work. Is defining these words more …

Encyclopedia Entries: "Lgbtq Asian Americans" & "George Takei", Ann Matsuuchi

Publications and Research

Encyclopedia entries on "LGBTQ Asian Americans" & "George Takei" pages 491-498. Originally published in: Asian American Culture: From Anime to Tiger Moms. Edited by Lan Dong. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. March 2016. Copyright© 2016 by ABC-CLIO, LLC All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Inclusion in this institutional repository is permitted by the publisher's contract: "Publisher grants to …

South African Marriage In Policy And Practice: A Dynamic Story, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

Law forms one of the major structural contexts within which family lives play out, yet the precise dynamics connecting these two foundational institutions are still poorly understood. This article attempts to help bridge this gap by applying sociolegal concepts to empirical findings about state law's role in family, and especially in marriage, drawn from across several decades and disciplines of South Africanist scholarly research. I sketch the broad outlines of a nuanced theoretical approach for analysing the law-family relationship, which insists that the relationship entails a contingent and dynamic interplay between relatively powerful regulating institutions and relatively powerless regulated populations. …

La Vida Sexual De Chopin, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Resumen:

La historiografía musical y la cultura popular nos han legado una imagen de Chopin como un ser débil y asexual. Este tópico incluso ha marcado la obra de pensadores como Sartre en su obra La náusea. Sin embargo, la lectura de la correspondencia del compositor nos brinda el perfil de un ser humano con unas inquietudes sexuales bastante “normales”. En su juventud, Chopin mantuvo una estrecha relación, que algunos definirían como homosexual, con Titus Woyciechowski y años más tarde frecuentó el círculo de Altolphe de Custine, erudito aristócrata de prestigio y reconocido homosexual. La correspondencia –posiblemente fraudulenta– entre Chopin …

An Activist's Guide To Lesbian History: A Companion To The Video Not Just Passing Through, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

This guide, designed to accompany the video Not Just Passing Through, contains guidelines for conducting oral history, forms for donating material to mainstream and community based archives, and lessons for engaging lesbian history with activism.

The Lesbian And Gay Past: An Interpretive Battleground, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

The lesbian and gay past is an interpretive battleground that mainstream archives have refused to enter, assuming few risks in collecting, naming, or identifying archival collections. At the same time, libraries offer up worlds to those who work to unearth the secrets there.

The New York Public Library's 1994 "Becoming Visible" exhibit trumpeted The Arrival of lesbian and gay history to New York's cultural mainstream. The NYPL exhibit denies the library's role in secreting lesbian and gay history, and diminished the contributions of community-based archives to the exhibit.

To Tell The Truth: The Lesbian Herstory Archives: Chronicling A People And Fighting Invisibility Since 1974, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

A portrait of the Lesbian Herstory Archives by a volunteer, describing the archive in its original home in Joan Nestle's Upper West Side New York City apartment that she shared with Mabel Hampton. Originally published in Out/Week Magazine.