Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (Between Men--Between Women)
by Lillian Faderman
from Penguin (Non-Classics)
Homosexuality and Civilization
by Louis Crompton
from Belknap Press
How have major civilizations of the last two millennia treated people who were attracted to their own sex? In a narrative tour de force, Louis Crompton chronicles the lives and achievements of homosexual men and women alongside a darker history of persecution, as he compares the Christian West with the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, Arab Spain, imperial China, and pre-Meiji Japan.
Ancient Greek culture celebrated same-sex love in history, literature, and art, making high claims for its moral influence. By contrast, Jewish religious leaders in the sixth century B.C.E. branded male homosexuality as a capital offense and, later, blamed it for the destruction of the biblical city of Sodom. When these two traditions collided in Christian Rome during the late empire, the tragic repercussions were felt throughout Europe and the New World.
Louis Crompton traces Church-inspired mutilation, torture, and burning of "sodomites" in sixth-century Byzantium, medieval France, Renaissance Italy, and in Spain under the Inquisition. But Protestant authorities were equally committed to the execution of homosexuals in the Netherlands, Calvin's Geneva, and Georgian England. The root cause was religious superstition, abetted by political ambition and sheer greed. Yet from this cauldron of fears and desires, homoerotic themes surfaced in the art of the Renaissance masters--Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Sodoma, Cellini, and Caravaggio--often intertwined with Christian motifs. Homosexuality also flourished in the court intrigues of Henry III of France, Queen Christina of Sweden, James I and William III of England, Queen Anne, and Frederick the Great.
Anti-homosexual atrocities committed in the West contrast starkly with the more tolerant traditions of pre-modern China and Japan, as revealed in poetry, fiction, and art and in the lives of emperors, shoguns, Buddhist priests, scholars, and actors. In the samurai tradition of Japan, Crompton makes clear, the celebration of same-sex love rivaled that of ancient Greece.
Sweeping in scope, elegantly crafted, and lavishly illustrated, Homosexuality and Civilization is a stunning exploration of a rich and terrible past.
(20031130)Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940
by George Chauncey
from Basic Books
The Scarlet Professor: Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal
by Barry Werth
from Anchor
During his thirty-seven years at Smith College, Newton Arvin published groundbreaking studies of Hawthorne, Whitman, Melville, and Longfellow that stand today as models of scholarship and psychological acuity. He cultivated friendships with the likes of Edmund Wilson and Lillian Hellman and became mentor to Truman Capote. A social radical and closeted homosexual, the circumspect Arvin nevertheless survived McCarthyism. But in September 1960 his apartment was raided, and his cache of beefcake erotica was confiscated, plunging him into confusion and despair and provoking his panicked betrayal of several friends.
An utterly absorbing chronicle, The Scarlet Professor deftly captures the essence of a conflicted man and offers a provocative and unsettling look at American moral fanaticism.
Man to Man: A History of Gay Photography (Male Photography)
by Pierre Borhan
from Vendome Press
This is the first comprehensive study of homoeroticism and male homosexuality in the history of photography. DaguerreÂ’s invention of photography was quickly adapted by men as a gay art form.
Pierre Borhan provides a fast-paced overview of the principal themes in 19th-century homoerotic photography.
Olivier Saillard surveys the homoerotic urge in fashion photography, from layouts in Vogue and other fashion magazines to the tongue-in-cheek advertising campaigns of Calvin Klein and other fashion icons.
Gilles Mora has sought out rare and unpublished prints by such seminal photographers as Horst, Mapplethorpe, and Herb Ritts.
The Transgender Reader
from Routledge
Although the term "transgender" itself has achieved familiarity only within the past decade, this authoritative collection of articles demonstrates that the study of behaviors, bodies, and subjective identities which contest common Eurocentric notions of gender has a history stretching back at least to the early 20th century.
Transgender studies is the latest area of academic inquiry to grow out of the exciting nexus of queer theory, feminist studies, and the history of sexuality. Because transpeople challenge our most fundamental assumptions about the relationship between bodies, desire, and identity, the field is both fascinating and contentious. The Transgender Studies Reader puts between two covers fifty influential texts with new introductions by the editors that, taken together, document the evolution of transgender studies in the English-speaking world. By bringing together the voices and experience of transgender individuals, doctors, psychologists, and academically-based theorists, this volume will be a foundational text for the transgender community, transgender studies, and related queer theory.
"Unsung Heroes: Reading Transgender Subjectivities in Hong Kong Action Cinema." Copyright (c) 2004-5 by Helen Hok-Sze Leung. Reprinted from Masculinities and Hong Kong Cinema. Eds. Laikwan Pang and Day Wong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005. 81-98.
Aimée & Jaguar: A Love Story, Berlin 1943
by Erica Fischer
from Alyson Books
Acclaimed in Germany and England, this tragic and remarkable real-life love story won a Lambda Literary Award when it was first published in America in 1995. Lilly Wust ("Aimée") was a conventional middle-class mother of four, estranged from her philandering husband, when she met Felice Schragenheim ("Jaguar") in 1941. Their passionate affair unfolded against the backdrop of the deportation of Jews from Berlin, but several months passed before Felice could even bring herself to tell Lilly that she was Jewish and living illegally on the streets. "I knew, of course, what it meant," Lilly recalled in old age. "Not for a moment did I think that I too could be in danger. On the contrary, all I wanted to do now was to save her." Lilly's heroic efforts to conceal and protect Felice through the next two years make for painful and inspiring reading. Felice was arrested in August 1944 and sent her last letter to Lilly four months later. In 1981 Lilly was awarded the German Federal Service Cross, though no one could read this as a happy ending. --Regina Marler
Excerpts
A letter from Lilly to Felice, March 31st, 1943
Felice, I love you! What a feeling it is to be able to say that! Oh, Felice, the nicest fate I could hope for is that of lasting happiness. I want to live with you for a long, a very long time, do you hear? And life is so beautiful, so wonderful. Felice, do you belong to me - without limit? To me only? Please say you do, at least for a very long time to come, please! Do you love me? I'm acting like a seventeen-year-old, arent't I?
Be good to me, Felice, please? And yet please don't hold back. I wanted to lure you out of your hiding place. I am like a child playing with fire; will I get burned? A little? Totally? Felice, stop me! Isn't it just a little bit your fault that I'm so crazy, so totally crazy?
A poem from Felice to Lilly, Christmas 1943
That there was a time before you - I can't believe!
To me, we've forever been this way,
Together, side by side in life and in dreams,
Surrounded both by darkness and the light of day.
You belong to me! Since you arrived,
And slowly at first, then full of trust,
Placed your heart in my hands, I have strived
For the strength to build a life for us.
So I have hope for days yet to come,
As this year nods and slips into air,
Because before me, like some emblem,
I carry the copper gleam of your hair.
Extract: "The Vow"
January 30th, 1943, the tenth anniversary of Hitler's seizure of power, Hermann Gring's speech to Berliners was delayed for two hours because British scout planes were flying over the city in broad daylight for the first time. Four days after Gring declared his certainty of victory, the remaining German troops trapped in Stalingrad capitulated. Accompanied by funereal music, the defeat was announced on the radio. On February 18th Reichspropaganda minister Goebbels spurred the German people to make a greater effort. In a "Declaration of fanatical Will" at the Berlin Sportpalast he announced the "Salvation of Germany and the whole of civilisation" through "total war". In memory of the victims of the Russian campaign, a three minute traffic stoppage was declared. At the Zoo station, people stood stock
Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century
by John Boswell
from University Of Chicago Press
John Boswell's National Book Award-winning study of the history of attitudes toward homosexuality in the early Christian West was a groundbreaking work that challenged preconceptions about the Church's past relationship to its gay members—among them priests, bishops, and even saints—when it was first published twenty-five years ago. The historical breadth of Boswell's research (from the Greeks to Aquinas) and the variety of sources consulted make this one of the most extensive treatments of any single aspect of Western social history. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, still fiercely relevant today, helped form the disciplines of gay and gender studies, and it continues to illuminate the origins and operations of intolerance as a social force.
"What makes this work so exciting is not simply its content—fascinating though that is—but its revolutionary challenge to some of Western culture's most familiar moral assumptions."—Jean Strouse, Newsweek
Lieutenant Nun
by Catalina de Erauso
from Beacon Press
Marjorie Garber (Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety), provides a lively introduction to this picaresque autobiography of a 17th-century nun turned cross-dressing soldier. De Erauso's story itself is a swashbuckler's catalogue of sword fights, daring escapes, damsels in distress, and witty repartee. Even if only half of what de Erauso claims about herself is true, it's a life well worth remembering and an utterly wonderful read.
Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World
Translated by Michele Stepto and Gabriel Stepto
Foreword by Marjorie Garber
The memoir of a 16th century Basque woman who escaped a convent dressed as a boy became a soldier in the Spanish army, killed her own brother, and managed to become the darling of the Pope and the Spanish-speaking world.
Someone I Love Is Gay: How Family & Friends Can Respond
by Anita Worthen
from InterVarsity Press
Finding out that a child, spouse, relative or friend is homosexual can be an unwelcome surprise. You're hit with a complex combination of emotions--grief, shame, fear, guilt. You are flooded with questions ranging from why to what's next. You wonder what a biblical response would be. At the same time, someone you care about deeply may be awaiting your response. What should you say?Someone I Love Is Gay was created out of Bob Davies's personal and professional experience and out of Anita Worthen's struggle with her son over these issues. Also drawing on experiences of others, the authors will help you handle your feelings while responding appropriately to your loved one.
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