Homintern : how gay culture liberated the modern world Cover Image

Book

Homintern : how gay culture liberated the modern world / Gregory Woods.

Woods, Gregory, 1953- (author.).

Summary:

"In a hugely ambitious study which crosses continents, languages, and almost a century, Gregory Woods identifies the ways in which homosexuality has helped shape Western culture. Extending from the trials of Oscar Wilde to the gay liberation era, this book examines a period in which increased visibility made acceptance of homosexuality one of the measures of modernity. Woods shines a revealing light on the diverse, informal networks of gay people in the arts and other creative fields. Uneasily called "the Homintern" (an echo of Lenin's "Comintern") by those suspicious of an international homosexual conspiracy, such networks connected gay writers, actors, artists, musicians, dancers, filmmakers, politicians, and spies. While providing some defense against dominant heterosexual exclusion, the grouping brought solidarity, celebrated talent, and, in doing so, invigorated the majority culture. Woods introduces an enormous cast of gifted and extraordinary characters, most of them operating with surprising openness; but also explores such issues as artistic influence, the coping strategies of minorities, the hypocrisies of conservatism, and the effects of positive and negative discrimination. Traveling from Harlem in the 1910s to 1920s Paris, 1930s Berlin, 1950s New York and beyond, this sharply observed, warm-spirited book presents a surpassing portrait of twentieth-century gay culture and the men and women who both redefined themselves and changed history"-- Provided by publisher.

Record details

ISBN: 9780300218039
ISBN: 0300218036
Physical Description: xv, 421 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Publisher: New Haven : Yale University Press, [2016]
Copyright: ©2016

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 380-401) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

The homintern conspiracy. Beginning to count themselves ; Natural secret agents and natural traitors ; The Girls' Friendly Society ; Positions of influence ; All queers meet each other -- Scandal and after. The Wilde case (1895) ; The Eulenberg case (1906-09) ; The Pemberton Billing case (1918) ; Getting away ; Radclyffe Hall and The Well of Loneliness (1928-29) ; Dolly Wilde: the next generation ; Lord Alfred Douglas -- The Northern exotic. Moonlight people ; Lovers of the beautiful ; The Russian Ballet ; The Swedish Ballet ; Sergei Eisenstein ; Tamara de Lempicka ; Rudolf Nureyev -- France and its visitors. The Paris scene ; Pedestrians and pederasts: Americans in Paris ; The modern Sapphic Paris ; Indifferent tolerance -- Germany and its visitors. The George Kreis ; The Berlin scene ; Magnus Hirschfeld ; Visitors to Berlin ; Flirting with Fascism -- Frivolity to seriousness. The fashionable vice ; Modernity outdated ; Becoming serious: Evelyn Waugh ; The Nancy poets and their detractors ; Pansipoetical poets -- Berlin propagandized. Sodom on spree ; The homosexuality of Hitler(ism) ; Publications and bookshops ; Sexual tourism -- The Southern exotic. That southwards drift ; Capri and its visitors ; Sicily and its visitors ; The intolerant South ; In every land an oriental colony ; Tangier and its visitors ; The oriental occidentalist: Yukio Mishima -- The New World. Harlem and its visitors ; A new Sodom ; Gay Hollywood ; New York to Havana and back ; Manuel Puig -- The new politics. A lot of privacy ; The "good" homosexual ; The "bad" homosexual ; From the covert to the overt ; Culture and gay culture ; Madness begets madness.