Queer Lit

What did queer life look like in Soviet Russia? Rustam Alexander has written two whole books about gay oppression in Russian history and is here to share what they learned in the archives, from diaries, and from doctors’ records. From the revolution to the ‘gay propaganda’ law of 2013, Rustam talks about the state and the history of Russian queerness. We discuss gay activism, the medicalisation of queerness and a very curious shift in legislation…

CW: homophobia, medicalisation of queerness, conversion therapy, aversion therapy

References:

Regulating Homosexuality in Soviet Russia, 1956-91 (Manchester UP, 2021)

Red Closet: The Hidden History of Gay Oppression in the USSR (Manchester UP, 2023)

Russia’s Gay Propaganda Law (2013)

Dan Healey’s Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia

Harry Whyte

Stalin

Tsarist Regime

Bolsheviks

Russian Revolution

GULAG

Doctor Goland

Dennis Altman’s Homosexual Oppression and Liberation


Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1. Was homosexuality always criminalised in Russia?
2. Which are some of Rustam’s main sources?
3. Which major shifts in attitudes towards queerness does Rustam discuss?
4. What does Rustam say about rural and urban spaces? Have you heard about or experienced this spatial dichotomy before?
5. What does oppression mean? Have you ever experienced or witnessed oppression?

A dog walks into a lesbian bar. I am not sure there is a punchline but there is definitely a podcast episode here. Listen to this chat with my lovely friend and colleague Maria to hear about the conference we will be hosting together, about queerness and/in the city, about seriality and sexuality, and about Maria’s fascinating take on TV and identity.

Follow @queerlitpodcast on Instagram and help us answer the question of all questions: Berlin or Cologne?

References to Maria’s work:

City Scripts: Narratives of Postindustrial Urban Futures. Co-edited with Barbara Buchenau and Jens Martin Gurr, the Ohio State University Press (2023).

“Surviving the City: Zombies, Run! and the Horrors of Urban Exercise.” Playing the Field II: American Studies, Video Games, and Space, edited by Dietmar Meinel. De Gruyter, 2022. 223-240.

Gender and Seriality: Practices and Politics of Contemporary US Television. Edinburgh: University Press, 2021.

“Defined by Distance: The Roadtrip and Queer Love in Alice Isn’t Dead.” Special Issue “Feminism, Gender, and Podcast Studies,” edited by Julia Hoydis. Gender Forum 77 (2020): 69-89.
http://genderforum.org/1596-2/

Die anderen Ministerpräsidenten – Geschlecht in der printmedialen Berichterstattung über Berufspolitik. Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2014.

Other references:

https://queersecondcities.wordpress.com/

[email protected]

ALUS https://blogs.helsinki.fi/hlc-n/

Zombies, Run!

Lieven Ameel (et al) Literary Second Cities

Scott Herring’s Another Country: Queer Anti-Urbanism

Jack Halberstam

Metronormativity

Stuart Hall

Raymond Williams

Angela McRobbie

How To Get Away With Murder

The Hundred

Maria San Filippo’s The B Word

House

Spiral Gendering

Ben Robbins

James Baldwin’s Another Country (1962)

The Last Black Man in San Francisco


Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1. What is a second city?
2. What do cities have to do with queerness?
3. Maria briefly speaks about metronormativity. Please find a definition for this term and think about how it is relevant to urban/rural queer spaces.
4. What is seriality? Which kinds of narratives might this concept apply to?
5. How is seriality relevant to gender and sexuality? Maria speaks about bisexuality but maybe you can think of storylines in series that deal with other aspects of queerness?

We know that queer and trans people have always been around, but how do you go about finding them? Diane Watt is here to show us how it’s done: all you need is lesbian methodology, queer philology, and tiny curtains. Intrigued? Tune in to learn more and to listen to Diane and I discuss shared butch lesbian and transmasculine histories, lesbian nuns, and medieval dildos.

If this all sounds too good to be true, you can make sure that Diane is a real (and really awesome) person by checking @Diane_Watt on Twitter or @medievalist.on.the.run on Instagram. @queerlitpodcast is there too.

References:
Diane Watt, Corinne Saunders (2023) Women and Medieval Literary Culture. Cambridge University Press.
R Magnani, Diane Watt (2018) “Towards a Queer Philology,” Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies 9:3, 252-268.
Diane Watt (2017) “A Fragmentary Archive: Migratory Feelings in Early Anglo-Saxon Women’s Letters,” Journal of Homosexuality 64:3, 415-429.
N Giffney, MM Sauer, D Watt (2011) The Lesbian Premodern. Palgrave MacMillan.
Diane Watt (2007) Medieval Women's Writing: Works by and for Women in England, 1100-1500. Polity Press.
Diane Watt (2003) Amoral Gower. University of Minnesota Press.
Diane Watt (1997) Secretaries of God. D.S. Brewer.
Margery Kempe
Margaret Paston
Eleanor Rykener
Susan Lanser’s The Sexuality of History
Judith Bennett
Lesbian-like
Roberta Magnani
Elizabeth Freeman
Temporal drag
Iphis and Ianthe
John Gower’s Confessio Amantis
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
Christopher Ricks
Lara Farina
St Albans Psalter
Christina of Markyate
How To Read Podcast
https://www.howtoreadpodcast.com/andrew-albin-sounds-medieval-books/
M.W. Bychowski “Trans Textuality: Dysphoria in the Depths of Medieval Skin”
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41280-018-0090-6
Duke Humfrey’s Library
Bodleian Library
Huon of Bordeaux
The Museum of Sex Objects
Julian of Norwich
Anne Lister’s Diaries

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1. What does Diane tell us about records of medieval lesbians in England and Wales?
2. What is queer philology? How is it different from other definitions of philology?
3. What examples of lesbian methods does Diane give?
4. Diane talks about trans book history and makes an interesting observation about scars. What do you think about this?
5. How can literature teach us new things about history when other records might be limited? What might be benefits and limitations of such an approach?

Join @DrNChakrabarty and I in the magic teapot at @OutandWildlgbtq to talk about reading in queer spaces, writing about race hate crimes, and community at queer events. We also reflect on academic structures and queer encounters, critical race theory and cultural differences in talking about race. It was such a pleasure running into Elizabeth again and if you’re not a fan already, you will be after listening to this!

CW: racism, race hate crimes

References: Elizabeth Chakrabarty’s Lessons in Love and Other Crimes
https://elizabethchakrabarty.com/
https://outandwild.co.uk/
https://www.postcolonial-participation.hhu.de/en/

Questions may want to reflect on after listening:

1. What makes a queer festival queer?
2. What do you think is the role of cultural events, such as readings or performances, in queer spaces?
3. What do you think about the intersectional issues Elizabeth addresses with race and queerness? Does anything in the conversation surprise you?
4. We reflect on readings and discussions in queer spaces versus academic venues. Do you think queer spaces provide something academia cannot?

In this trip to the Queer Lit archives, (the) Prof Terry Castle (Stanford University) joins me to discuss a corpus I don’t usually think about: lesbian content produced by cis-male authors. We talk about what’s great and not so great about these texts, which moments in literary history opened new doors for queer representation and why literature is such an apt medium to understand the fluidity of gender and attraction. Of course, we talk about many lesbian-authored texts as well and I am particularly grateful that Terry was open to talk about her own story and coming out.

Works by Terry mentioned:
The Professor and Other Writings (Harper Collins, 2010)
“The Lesbianism of Philip Larkin” (Daedalus 136.2, 2007)
The Literature of Lesbianism: A Historical Anthology from Ariosto to Stonewall (Columbia UP, 2003)
The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture (Columbia UP, 1993)

Other writers and texts mentioned:
Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle
Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Twelfth Night
Ariosto
John Cleland’s Fanny Hill
Diderot
Balzac
Flaubert
Gautier’s Mademoiselle de Maupin
Collette’s Claudine novels
Sue Lanser’s Sexuality of History
Diana Souhami’s No Modernism without Lesbians
Aphra Behn
Natalie Barney
Djuna Barnes
Juvenal
Martial
Sappho
D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow
Henry James’ The Bostonians
Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sea Change” and The Garden of Eden
Gertrude Stein
Marcel Proust
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway
Lord Byron

Ahhhh! We didn’t get to talk about Terry’s art! Check it out on Instagram and Twitter (@ThierryChateau) and give me a follow as well, if you like (@queerlitpodcast).

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening to this episode:
1.We briefly reference Terry’s book ‘The Apparitional Lesbian’ (1993). Please do a little bit of research on what the book is about and on what ‘apparitional’ can mean.
2.What is Terry’s favourite time in lesbian literary history and why?
3.Which types of female characters do we find in the 18th-century realist novel? Why is that interesting?
4.Terry talks about male writers producing lesbian literature. What are your thoughts on this? Please try to think through more than one position.
5.Why do writers go back to Ancient Greece to think about homosexuality? From what time onwards? What restricted access to texts?
6.Please comment on flat and round characters in Mrs Dalloway. Do you agree with Terry’s perspective?

If you haven’t been to the Common Press yet, you’re missing out! But not to worry, Alfonzo and I will transport you there. The Common Press is an intersectional bookshop and event space at the end of Brick Lane and I wish I could live there because the curation of events and books is amazing and the chai latte is fabulous and I found all of my favourite new reads there.

References:
Chris Mounsey
Variabilities
Aisha Shaibu-Lenoir
Above the Stag
Richmix
Sara Ahmed
UK Black Pride
Bi Pride
Freddie Ruddock
BLM
Stephen Murray and Will Roscoe’s Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualities
Brontez Purnell’s 100 Boyfriends, Since I Laid My Burden Down, Johnny Would You Love Me If My Dick Were Bigger Cipher Press

Questions you may want to reflect on after listening:

1. What might make a queer space different from an intersectional space? How could they be similar?
2. How much time do you get to spend in intersectional spaces?
3. What do you need in a space to feel welcome?
4. If you could open a radical bookshop tomorrow, what would you call it?

In one of the first Queer Lit episodes ever, I got to chat with LaVelle Ridley (University of Michigan) about her doctoral research on black trans life narratives in this one and I must say, she’s a tonic. From important observations on the role of storytelling in political and community activism to the deeply personal process of healing that appropriate representation can initiate, LaVelle covers it all. She’s a scholar, an activist, a pisces (hell, yes!), a creative writer, a mermaid, and an absolute delight to talk to. Don’t miss this one; it’s fun!

Texts and people mentioned:
Paradise on the Margins: Lessons and Dreams from Trans Women of Color
https://www.paradiseonthemargins.com/
Atargatis
https://mermaidsuk.org.uk/
Susan Stryker
Maggie Nelson’s “The Argonauts”
Janet Mock’s “Redefining Realness” (2014) and “Surpassing Certainty” (2017)
CeCe McDonald
Toni Newman
Venus Di'Khadijah Selenite
Laverne Cox and Jac Gares’ “FREE Cece!”
Ridley, LaVelle. "Imagining Otherly: Performing Possible Black Trans Feminist Futures in Tangerine." TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 6.4 (November 2019): 481-490.
LaKisha Simmons
“Tangerine”
Mya Taylor
Kiki Rodriguez
Mj Rodriguez
POSE
Kai Cheng Thom’s “Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars”
Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”
https://lavelleridley.wixsite.com/mysite

Do you think you can tell someone is queer by listening to their voice? Dr Fabio Fasoli is here to tell us all about gay voice stereotypes, auditory gaydar, and voice-based bias. We talk about gay voice acting in 90s sitcoms, learn surprising facts about lesbian voices and employability, and discuss the intersection of foreign accents and gender-nonconforming voices.

References
Fasoli, F., Dragojevic, M., & Rakic, T. (In press). When voice signals nationality and sexual orientation: Speakers’ self-perceptions and perceived stigmatisation. Psychology of Language and Communication.

Fontanele, A. B., de Sousa, L., & Fasoli, F. (2022). Who does discriminate against gay-sounding speakers? The role of prejudice on voice-based hiring decisions in Brazil. Journal of Language and Social Psychology.

Galdi, S., Guizzo, F., & Fasoli, F. (2022). Media representation matters: The effects of exposure to counter-stereotypical gay male characters on heterosexual men’s expressions of discrimination. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations. Advanced online publication.

Masi, M., Mattavelli, S., Fasoli, F. & Brambilla, M. (In press). When faces and voices come together: Face width-to-height ratio and voice pitch contribute independently to social perception. European Journal of Social Psychology.

Fasoli, F., & Hegarty, P. (2020). A Leader Doesn’t Sound Lesbian!: The Impact of Sexual Orientation Vocal Cues on Heterosexual Persons’ First Impression and Hiring Decision. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 44(2), 234-255.

Cartei, V., & Reby, D. (2012). Acting gay: Male actors shift the frequency components of their voices towards female values when playing homosexual characters. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 36, 79-93.

Morandini, J. S., Beckman-Scott, D., Madill, C., & Dar-Nimrod, I. (2023). BIDAR: Can Listeners Detect if a Man Is Bisexual from His Voice Alone?. The Journal of Sex Research, 1-13. Advanced online publication.

Fabio Fasoli and Peter Hegarty “Straight talk about gaydar: How do individuals guess others’ sexual orientation?” https://www.in-mind.org/article/straight-talk-about-gaydar-how-do-individuals-guess-others-sexual-orientation

Do I Sound Gay?

David Thorpe

Straight categorisation bias

Sex Education

Will and Grace

David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day

Matteo Lane

Mae Martin

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1. What is ‘auditory gaydar’? Why does Fabio prefer to talk about ‘gay voice stereotype’?
2. What happens when people sound foreign and queer at the same time? What do Fabio’s studies suggest?
3. How do stereotypes about queer voices intersect with gendered expectations of voice and speech patterns?
4. Do you sometimes draw conclusions about someone’s identity through their voice? Do you assume you’re usually correct?
5. Can you think of an example of a gay voice stereotype in literature, film or series? What might the effect of such mediatised stereotypes be?

Hold on to your pussyhats! The incredible Prof Susan Stryker joins me for this whirlwind through trans histories, nows, and futures, in which we talk about the power of narrative and affect in research and media and about what transness might teach us about possible ways of existing in the world. Susan shares rather entertaining insights from her ground-breaking publications and films, as well as the creative projects she is working on right now. We even get to hear about how she teaches a magnificent work of trans* literature we have discussed in Queer Lit episodes past…

Don’t wait for it! Listen now and follow @susanstryker, @lena_mattheis and @queerlitpodcast on Twitter, and @queerlitpodcast on Instagram.

Works by Susan mentioned:
https://www.susanstryker.net/
Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution (Seal Press, 2017)
Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria (with Victor Silverman, 2005)
“My Words to Viktor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage” (GLQ, 1994)
Changing Gender: Memoir, History, Manifesto (working title)

Texts, people and quotations mentioned:
Janet Mock
“The Woman-Identified Woman” Manifesto
“The Lesbian is the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion.”
Patricia Elliot
Lacan
Žižek
Teresa de Lauretis
Hyperobject
Anthropocene
Anna Tsing et al. (eds): Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet
Foucault
Christine Jorgensen
“Christine in the Cutting Room”
60 Minutes
Mike Wallace
Ornette Coleman
Wendy Carlos’ Switched-on Bach
Tape music
Shirley Clarke’s Ornette: Made in America (1985)
Free jazz
Jordy Rosenberg’s Confessions of the Fox (2018)
Jack Sheppard
Mack The Knife
Three Penny Opera
Nabokov’s Pale Fire
Junot Diaz
Amitav Ghosh’s River of Smoke
Freud
Deleuze and Guattari
Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History and The Arcades Project
Berthold Brecht
Foucault’s Herculine Barbin
Jakob von Uexküll

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1. How do affect and theory interact in Susan’s work?

1. How can trans* allow us to think about other systems (such as the state or the environment) in new, more open ways?

1. Are you familiar with any trans* figures from literature or history?

1. Which people from trans* history does Susan mention? Please pick one and find out more about them.

1. What is the special formal element Susan highlights in speaking about Confessions of the Fox? Can you connect this to her other thoughts on (media or literary) form and transness? How can the cinematic art of film cutting parallel transitions?

Seeing double? This here podcast just so happens to share its name with a brilliant LGBTQIA+ bookshop, located in the heart of one of the queer places to be in the UK: Manchester. I met Matthew, the owner, and Jasper, the beagle, in the shop for a chat about their origin story, their book clubs and their exciting next move… Don’t delay, listen (and visit) today!

References
https://www.queerlit.co.uk/
Social Refuge
Feel Good Club
The Cockatoo Club
Daniel Harding’s Gay Man Talking
Matt Cain
Henry Fry
Julia Armfield
Meg-John Barker’s Rewriting the Rules and How to Understand Your Sexuality
https://www.rewriting-the-rules.com/
“Non-binary Life” with Meg-John Barker
https://www.spreaker.com/episode/48558860
Alice Oseman
Sheena Patel’s I’m A Fan
Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

Questions you may want to think about:

1. If you could create any queer space, what would it look like?
2. How do you find queer books?
3. Matthew talks about many LGBTQIA+ books not being identifiable as such right away. Why do you think that is?
4. Which queer book would you want to be in every school library?