Tretterite

Moving to WanderMonkey

2010-01-05T09:17:00.000-08:00

Gay stuff I work on will now be posted along with my other work at WanderMonkey.

As might be expected, I'm finding it too difficult to keep up with many blogs at once, and I've decided I really don't need or want to have my volunteer work at the Tretter collection sectioned off in my mind or on the internet from my more formal work as a PhD student in Chinese history and literature, and so I will cease this blog and fold everything into my other work blog (tagged with the word "queer," bien sûr).

HRC

2009-08-22T12:05:00.000-07:00

HRC's Logo -- wonder where this came from?

Looking at Tretter's boxes of stuff on the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), I think I can see a little more clearly what they have accomplished, and I'm thinking it won't be hard at all to produce a quality panel about them.

Basically, HRC is a lobbying group, also known as a "political action committee" (PAC). Much of their effectiveness comes from imitating previous powerful PACs like the Christian Coalition. Of course, not all GLBT advocates agree that this imitation was the right path for the GLBT rights movement.
Portrait of an Issue: 15 years of ENDA

HRC began helped introduce the Employee Non-Discrimination Act to Congress in 1994, and they have been fighting to get it through ever since. Will it finally pass in 2009?

Pink slip for Cheryl Summerville of Georgia. Without ENDA, she can't do anything about losing her job for being "gay."

Cheryl Summerville

HRC Lobbyists

Stephen Endean, who began organizing GLBT campaign contributions to supportive candidates in Minnesota, and later founded HRC in Washington, DC in 1980.

Candace Gingrich, who went on a speaking tour in 1994 after her brother Newt became Speaker of the House

Elizabeth Birch, Executive Director in 1994, when HRC helped to protect AIDS research funding from Republican lawmakers who wanted it cut.

Leaders who worked with HRC

Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont, then a Republican, supported ENDA from the beginning

Wall of Shame: Leaders HRC opposed

Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, a legendary bigot that HRC attacked for years

Saint Sebastian

2009-06-02T19:51:00.000-07:00

"Many people have often wondered why St. Sebastian has always had a special attraction, for gay men in particular. It's the pictures, stupid! I mean, where did you think Calvin Klein got his ideas for all those underwear ads, Divine Inspiration?" -- Bob Racozky, The Gay Book of Saints

In a way, Racozky is right. The figure of Sebastian moved very early from being an icon in the Catholic church to being an icon for men whose ultimate ideals included a form of penetration that was simultaneously ecstasy and deathly pain; i.e. a gay icon.

Version by Lorenzo Costa, 1491

Louis Bourdechon, 1509

Version by "Il Sodoma," 1525

Ludovico Carracci, San Sebastiano, 1599, Gravina (Bari), Fondazione Pomarici-Santomasi.

Still from Derek Jarman's film Sébastiene (1976)

Joan of Arc

2009-06-02T19:14:00.001-07:00

Joan of Arc, whose visions of God led her to save 14th century-France just in time for Charles, her prince, to give her up to the English. They promptly tried her and burned her at the stake for the wickedness of transgressing the hetero-normative gender ideals of the age. Little did the English know that they were creating a martyr for gender-transgression in centuries to come.

Joan of Arc, Franco-Flemish school, fifteenth century (Archives Nationales, Paris/Bridgeman Art Library, London)

The English lesbian Vita Sackville-West was electrified enough by the legend of the woman warrior Joan that she wrote a novel-like biography filled with Joan's thoughts and desires. Contemporary and later readers would criticize Sackville-West's implication that Joan might have been a lesbian; they also rejected Vita's notion that Joan was probably an unattractive woman. Her biography is still in print.

Vita Sackville-West, Joan of Arc (1936)

Milton Waldman, Joan of Arc (1935) Waldman's book, from around the same time as Vita Sackville-West's, remembers her in a more feminine mode (Joan as Shepherdess, Bibliotheque nationale).

More recent works like Joan of Arc: A Military Leader by Kelly Devries (2002; Jacket front: La Pucelle! by Frank Craig (1874-1918)) show that the concept of a young girl who is also a good soldier, a traditionally masculine role, is what keeps the figure of her so alive in our minds.

Saints and Sinners

2009-05-26T10:59:00.000-07:00

"Pope Joan" －－ The legend of a 9th century female pope might be a bit of papal satire, or it might have actually happened. Either way, it begs the question: why do all popes need to be men?

Oscar Wilde

2009-05-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

The British writer Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) has become an international icon of homosexuality as an aesthetic sensibility, a taboo form of desire, and a tragically heroic part of an individual's nature that was never acceptable in the cruel, hypocritical and class-obsessed world of Victorian-era England.

Oscar Wilde

Lord Alfred Douglas

The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Civil Rights And Gay Rights

2009-05-22T10:47:00.000-07:00

Bayard Rustin

Not many people know that one of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s most tireless, intelligent, and effective advisors and organizers was a gay man. Bayard Rustin was always by Dr. King's side, and his knowledge of Gandhi's protest techniques helped shape Dr. King's strategies of nonviolence.

Civil Rights, Equal Rights, Human Rights: Resonant Social Movements

The United States of America has a proud history as a breading ground of grassroots organizing that has changed the character of American politics and society again and again. To understand the history of the fight for equal rights for GLBT Americans, it is crucial to understand deeply resonant movements among African-American and immigrant communities, and the tremendous impact of organizing among American women, as well.

Refugees from authoritarian regimes like Cuba often include GLBT individuals whose sexual orientation or gender non-conformity makes them targets of violence in their home countries. In 1980, the GLBT communities of the Twin Cities helped to welcome and support GLBT refugees from Cuba. can

Local African-American Communities

2009-05-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

Uhm...yeah. Interesting text goes here.

International Pride

2009-05-22T09:14:00.000-07:00

After the 1969 Stonewall Riots, the first "Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day March" was held June 28, 1970 in New York City. From there it spread to other American cities; Minneapolis celebrated its first Pride Festival in 1972 in Loring Park. Now, "Gay Pride" has become a major holiday linking together GLBT communities across the United States and many other countries of the world.

At the second Pride in Minneapolis, the hand-made "pride guide" was made in the shape of a frisbee so people could throw it away quickly if they felt they needed to.

Stockholm Pride (Sweden)

The Nolte Collection

2009-05-22T09:03:00.001-07:00

This panel will come courtesy of fellow UMN graduate student Eric Colleary. Cribbing from his new Nolte Collection Blog:

Charles Nolte is a distinguished theater artist with an international reputation – an actor, playwright, director, and educator who taught at the University of Minnesota for three decades. As an actor, Nolte appeared in nine Broadway productions, including the title role in Louis Coxe and Robert Chapman’s Billy Budd and Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny Courtmartial.

In 2009, Dr. Charles M. Nolte donated his papers to the Tretter Collection for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies at the University of Minnesota. This donation formed the basis of an open collection for LGBT-related performance and film materials, with Nolte’s papers at its core.

Nolte's donation shows how the Tretter Collection can preserve life stories of important GLBT leaders, artistic, political and otherwise. Students and scholars will be able to use Nolte's amazing personal records to reconstruct a whole world of American professionals in drama, from the late 1940s to contemporary times.

Nolte as Billy Budd (1958)

A treasure-trove of journals and notes from a remarkable career in the theatre.

International Connections

2009-05-21T13:24:00.000-07:00

Forty years after the 1969 Stonewall Riots, Gay Pride Festivals now take place all over the developed world, connecting GLBT communities for advocacy, celebration, and finding love. Meanwhile, in other countries, same-sex love and gender nonconformity remain targets of discrimination, punishment and other forms of violence.

And yet, in progressive and oppressive nations alike, GLBT communities exist. Journals and newsletters are the basic tools for building these communities. For many years, Jean Tretter has collected these journals and newsletters. Now the Tretter Collection is one of the best resources for these materials in the world.

Body Politic (Canada)

Die Andere Welt (Germany)

KOM UT (Sweden)

FORUM lambda (Belarus)

Voila (French North Africa -- not a GLBT specific magazine, but a liberationist one that often covered GLBT topics)

Outlines (New Zealand, courtesy Laganz)

Gay Royale

2009-05-19T13:37:00.001-07:00

It's good to be the king. Or queen.

With political power comes extraordinary privileges, including the freedom to indulge your deepest sexual desires. So it makes sense then that as long as there were monarchs, there were monarchs who pursued flings, affairs and even life-long romances with lovers of the same gender.

Queen Anne (1665-1714)

This last of the Scottish Stuarts became notorious for the patronage she offered to her childhood friend and long-term lover, Sarah Jennings, later Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough. The British public did not mind the Queen's preference much at the time, but Sarah's influence over the Royal Person was the object of much jealousy at court, which eventually led to a bitter break-up.

Anne in her 20s, by Michael Dahl (Curtis, The Life and Times of Queen Anne)

Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, playing cards with a Lady (by Godfrey Kneller, Life and Times of Queen Anne)

Popular illustration of Anne and Sarah's break-up. "Upon her Knees famed Somerset receives an Office which another Duchess [Sarah] leaves." Life and Times of Queen Anne

Queen Christina of Sweden (1626-1689)

Christina was thought to have been a boy at birth; this confusion, combined with her later preference for masculine dress and demeanor, have led some to hypothesize that she was Intersex. Never inclined towards marriage, Christina is thought to have had both male and female lovers, including Ebba Sparre, her lady-in-waiting and 'bed-fellow.' At age 26, Christina abdicated the throne, converted to Catholicism, and moved to Rome where she became a great patron of the arts.

Dashing Christina (by Sébastien Bourdon, from Buckley, Christina, Queen of Sweden)

Chistina laughing as Ebba and another woman read from a bawdy book

The beautiful Countess Ebba Sparre, whom Christina called "Belle."
Gustav V, King of Sweden (1858-1950)

Well-loved as the King who built modern Sweden, but with a legacy of sexual scandal that erupted after the King's death in the intensely anti-Communist and homophobic 1950s. A man named Kurt Haijby announced in the mainstream press that he was Gustav's lover from 1912 until 1932; Swedes were perhaps more upset that the Crown at first tried to buy Haijby's silence.

Gustav with tennis buddies: image here from Hadenius, Gustav V

James VI and I, Scotland and England (1566-1625)

A biography in the collection

James, icon of Scottish-style Protestantism

George Villiers, Earl of Buckingham, aka "Your faithful slave and dog, Steenie." Image from Rowse's Illustrated History of Britain.

James greatest legacy: The King James Bible (From an old (date?) edition held at UMN)

Christian VII, King of Norway and Denmark (1749-1808)

The so-called "homosexual half-wit" was never really in control of his court; powerful advisers like his doctor, Johann Friedrich Struensee, allowed him to pursue boys and stay out of the way while they took the reigns of power.

Image available at Wikimedia commons.

Edward II, England (1284-1327)

Edward I subdued Scotland in a series of masterful military campaigns; Edward II, more interested in boys and parties, is blamed for Scottish rebellions during his reign. Edward's love for the selfish, impudent, but by all accounts extremely cute Piers Gaveston helped anger the court against the both of them. Edward's final tragic end (he is thought to have had a red-hot poker inserted into his anus) is dramatized in the play Edward II by Christopher Marlowe. British director Derek Jarman made a film version in 1991.

Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845-1886)

The reclusive builder of Neuschwanstein realized he was gay as a teenager when he discovered the music of Richard Wagner and the charms of young Bavarian men like Prince Paul von Thurn und Taxis and Richard Hornig. As his life became increasingly extravagant, government ministers moved to depose him, and Ludwig died in a mysterious drowning incident together with a close male friend.

Barazoku 薔薇族: the manga angle

2009-05-18T11:22:00.001-07:00

There's a lot of male-themed manga in the collection; I just scanned something that was laying around. This is from The Barazoku, a venerable gay-male magazine:

Barazoku was Japan's oldest gay magazine, and was in print for 33 years. First published in 1971, Barazoku was known as a trailblazer for other gay publications and a leader in Japanese gay culture, boasting celebrity fans including Akihiro Miwa, a drag queen rumored to have been a lover of famed author Yukio Mishima. During its 33 years, the magazine survived mainstream disapproval, legal injunctions, and numerous arrests of its founder and editor, Bungaku Itō.

According to the wikipedia entry, the magazine ceased publication in 2004.

Wikipedia also provides a good summary of the magazine's contents:

A typical issue of Barazoku had approximately 300 pages, including several pages of glossy colour and some black and white photographs of younger, fit men in their late teens and twenties (these photographs were censored in accordance with Japan's rules, which require the obscuring of genitals and pubic hair). Despite the inclusion of pornographic pictures, however, Barazoku was not a pornographic magazine.

The bulk of a typical issue of Barazoku was made up of articles and short stories, advice, how-tos, interviews, news, arts, and community listings. In comparison with other gay magazines like Badi, Barazoku typically had fewer pictures and less manga stories and news, which may have contributed to its demise.

I'm not totally sure what's going on here, but it looks like the big queenie bear is some sort of super hero figure. Midwesterner's should be able to relate to that, right?

Two more things to look for when browsing this mag:

Barazoku was the first gay magazine in Asia to be sold at mainstream bookshops, such as Kinokuniya. It became such a cultural phenomenon that its title has entered the mainstream language as a synonym for "gay".

In its early years, the magazine published anonymous work by some of Japan’s most famous poets and authors, and artwork by Goto Mishima. Founder Ito's determination to fight discrimination led the magazine to publish an interview with Japan’s first known AIDS sufferer when the mainstream media refused to address the issue.

Comix 2: Manga

2009-05-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

Examples of a "GL" (girls love) manga:

I bought these Chinese translations of Japanese manga at Gingin's Bookstore 晶晶書庫. Looks like author here is Mera Hakamada 袴田めら; she has a blog. These books are available in English as well as "The Last Uniform" 1 and 2. One Librarything user writes,

A wholesome set of short stories about high school girls, some of whom have crushes on other girls in their dorm. There isn't much plot driving this volume: it's just a series of vignettes that follow six girls through the school year.

Gay Comics

2009-05-11T14:20:00.001-07:00

The Tretter Collection has a good representation of GLBT-themed comics, including a sizable local gift of American comics from Peter Wilson, transferred from the Quatrefoil Library. Recent acquisitions from Japan and Taiwan offer a glimpse into the world of the tremendously popular "boy's love" and "girl's love" manga.

Gay Comics

Gay Comics anthologizes the underground comics series Gay Comix, which have been appearing since 1980. Major themes are finding love and resisting homophobia; the comics features work by artists of all genders.

Leyland Publications in San Francisco (a 1984 offshoot of Winston Leyland's Gay Sunshine Press) has brought out many more comics with gay males, often with much more graphic sexual material, as in the series Meatmen. Other Leyland comics exhibit slightly different styles, often with wry, lewd humor.

Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse is one of the most sophisticated and highly celebrated GLBT-themed comic arts yet written. Main character Toland Polk must come to grips with both racism and homophobia as he comes of age and comes out in 1960s Mississippi.

Wilson's donation includes several titles that are not put out by GLBT presses, nor do they contain explicitly homoerotic themes. And yet, they just seem gay. Perhaps this is a reminder that comic artists generally understand what it means to be marginalized and how important
it is to fight back, which attracts queer readers and can naturally reproduce a queer sensibility.

culture of queer : a tribute to J.B. Harter

2009-05-04T13:59:00.001-07:00

Rubin, David, and Contemporary Arts Center (New Orleans, LA) and the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation. The Culture of Queer : a Tribute to J.B. Harter. New Orleans: Contemporary Arts Center, 2005.

This nice little volume I dragged up from the collection does not have the breadth of a serious survey, but does serve as a quick guide to the major issues involved in the term "queer" as it is approached by a small group of contemporary artists and curators. From a focus on "know thy self" and "faces," the book also makes comments the role of "queer" as applied to stereotypes, male bonding, sex, commitment and AIDS. The book does not attempt to make any systematic conclusions about the term "queer" at all, either as an important part of some social advocacy or as a trait in art; it merely attempts to leave the impression that "queerness" does both of those things. Despite this weakness, the close attention given to each of the works presented makes the book a valuable peak into the usage of "queer" in one subcommunity of the art world.

J.B. Harter. Self-Portrait as Curator, 1983

I love the humor in this one. Harter was actually museum curator at the time he painted this. Apparently, "he was not yet publicly out of the closet," but he certainly gives his audience plenty of clues to work out his sexual orientation, as well as the basic attitude towards culture that it entails. How many ways can you find to say that he's gay?

This portrait of a famous, older, and openly gay photographer by a young admirer makes clever references to the many bonds the two of them share: photography, identity, and the male form, among others.

How many Boomer-era Americans think of a certain friend from their past, someone associated with home, welcomed into the family, and, eventually, the ideal of goodness, beauty, and all that is sexually desirable? The. (Ted) Titulo's photo-collage commemorates this narrative with equal parts fantasy and nostalgia, turning boyhood love into something sublime.

Each painting Michael Meads' patron saints series brings an overt sense of the sacred to scenes of male community. In For St. George, Patron Saint of Boy Scouts (1996), we have a rich meditation on the theme of 'mentoring,' with all of the problematic erotic overtones that are contained therein.

After a strong start, The Culture of Queer begins to fray into too many subtopics with no clear sequence or relation, and many of the pieces are too allusive to stand on their own. At least one discussion is worth remembering however: the pattern of "ultra-masculine stereotyping of gay men that emerged in post-Stonewall America in the 1970s was also taking hold at that time in other parts of the world..." Two examples here are the more familiar Touko Laaksonen, "Tom of Finland" and a new face for me, Japan's Tsuyoshi Yoshida, "Goh Mishima" (1924-1988). Mishima seems to me to provide a link between his namesake the seppuku-loving aesthete and later graphic publications in magazines like Barozoku.

Shuaiguy.cn

2009-04-28T20:25:00.000-07:00

Poking around, you know.

I discovered a gay Chinese website called Shuaiguy.cn. Random thoughts along the Way:
上有兩仙童，好食亦好飲。與我一丸藥，光輝有物色。

There were two young fairies living up there.
They *loved* eating; drinking, more.
They gave me a pill of elixir,
it glowed with all five colors.
(Apologies to Cao Pi)
Skin like ivory under water, deliciously desirable
「鮮膚一何潤，秀色若可餐。」 -- Lu Ji 陸機

RIP Eve Sedgwick

2009-04-20T18:00:00.001-07:00

Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick (May 2, 1950-April 12, 2009)

Professor Eve Sedgwick, an important founder of the academic sub-discipline 'Queer theory,' has died of cancer. She was 58. When she took to the academic stage in the 1970s at Yale University, English and other humanities departments were rarely welcoming to discussions of Feminism, of same-sex desire, of the fluidity of gender, or of homophobia. As an agressive and radical teacher, advocate and scholar, Professor Sedgwick worked tirelessly to change that situation. The fact that universities across America are more open than ever to the study of Feminism and Gay and Lesbian Studies is, in part, the result of the great conversations on identity, desire, and culture that Professor Sedgwick helped begin with essays like "Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl" and books like Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire and Epistemology of the Closet.

Both "Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl" and Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire examine great works of Western literature and find many places where something "queer" is going on. In Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, for example, Sedgwick finds coded expressions of repressed female sexuality. In a study of Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens, Sedgwick shows how homophobia, heterosexual desire, and homosexual desire can all become entangled among a set of multiple fictional characters. She believed firmly that life was like that -- to her, nobody was completely "straight," and the concepts of heterosexuality and homosexuality were far too simple to describe the way live, love, and hate. Building on Michel Foucault's theories of sexual behavior and the evolution of systems for controlling populations, Sedgwick developed "queer theory" as a set of reading strategies that could show how our sexual desires, our senses of gender, and even our very basic senses of identity are constructed by larger cultural forces.

"It's about trying to understand different kinds of sexual desire and how the culture defines them," she told The New York Times in 1998. In the obituary by Patricia Cohen for the New York Times, Ms. Cohen wisely asks us to

Consider the issue of gay marriage. Some contend that gays are like everyone else (what Ms. Sedgwick called the “universalizing view”) and should be treated that way; others portray them as an oppressed minority (the “minoritizing view”) who deserve protection. At the same time, those who would outlaw gay marriage can argue either that homosexuals are a deviant subgroup (minoritizing) or that the ubiquity of homosexual tendencies (universalizing) endangers the traditional institutions that underlie civilized society.

The persistence of the deadlock between the universalizing and minoritizing views, she wrote, is “the single most powerful feature of the important 20th-century understandings of sexuality, whether hetero or homo, and a determining feature too of all the social relations routed, in this sexualized century, through understandings of sexuality.” Ms. Butler said, “her brilliance was to show how both of these claims are often made at the same time, and that this is actually a productive tension.”

Much of Sedgwick's work, and many of her close readings of literary work, remain controversial. The constructivist view of sexual identity is problematic to many historians of gay and lesbian culture, including Jim Kepner, Louis Crompton, Warren Johansson, and the University's own Jean-Nickolas Tretter. To these scholars and archivists, gays and lesbians throughout history share a common, essential experience of same-sex desire that they are born with, and they also share a common experience of homophobia. Both scholarly perspectives have made great contributions to the study of sexual identity in American universities; surely this is another "productive tension."

Gay Art: Take 1 of 3

2009-04-13T14:30:00.001-07:00

Lucie-Smith, Edward. Sexuality in Western Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991.

Mapplethorpe's Muse (see p. 269)

Lucie-Smith does not dwell overly-much on homosexuality in his book, but when he does he makes very short, pithy readings that contain a great deal of sense. I think it is particularly significant that he ends his book by considering gay male art of the 1980s and early 90s, by which time it had ridden both the aesthetic of the "liberal establishment" and "libertarian protests against the repression of sexuality" to great fame, but perhaps only truly found the sublime once again during the AIDS crisis. Generalizing powerfully off gay male art engaged with AIDS, Lucie-Smith concludes the book with the implication the themes of sex and death, and their particular relationship to each other, are what really distinguish "Western attitudes from their counterparts in other cultures."

Takes 2 and 3, Coming up next time:

Cooper, Emmanuel. The sexual perspective : homosexuality and art in the last 100 years in the West. 2nd ed. London ;;New York: Routledge, 1994.

Rubin, David, and Contemporary Arts Center (New Orleans, La.);Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation. The culture of queer : a tribute to J.B. Harter. New Orleans: Contemporary Arts Center, 2005.

Wanted: Queer Art from the Harlem Renaissance

2009-04-13T13:34:00.001-07:00

Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance: Selections from the Work of Richard Bruce Nugent

I sure wish we had a copy of this at the Tretter Collection, but unfortunately I have to work without it for now. Check out the preview on Google Books for some great historical photos and most of the preface by Henry Louis Gates.

Ma Liuming 馬六明

2009-04-13T09:34:00.001-07:00

Ma Liuming 馬六明

Jean pointed out to me a Chinese artist of some interest for his gender-bending and sexual-themed performance pieces and photo shoots. A lot of it looks too in-your-face somehow to really succeed as art, but some of the images are haunting. I found a representative set of images at a site called ionly.com, which bills itself as an "history of exhibitions" (zhanlan shi 展覽史). What a cool resource that is! In addition to 144 images with complete citation and exhibition information, there are three full-length feature articles in Chinese on Ma Liuming.

Also of interest, perhaps: an English article from Artzine ("a contemporary Chinese art portal") laments that Ma Liuming got chubby, though lucky for him the value of his sexy photos continues to escalate. Hmm...

Mikel Marton

2009-04-04T09:00:00.000-07:00

Someone on Facebook introduced me to this artist. I've been in the mood for some high-brow art porn featuring beautiful men lately; Mikel Marton very much fits the bill.

Update: I found Mikel's blogspot blog first, but there is much more material on his website.

Back to work soon

2009-03-12T16:19:00.000-07:00

There's been no time for sex and sexuality research the last few days as I prepare bit of work on autobiographies. Here's a video a like though. The boy is cute, but I think I like the cat even better.

Tretter Day: Classical Music

2009-03-02T20:28:00.001-08:00

Gay Men and Classical Music: 2

Tchaikovsky

Year after year, the music of Russian composer Pyotr Ilytch Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) continues to attract listeners who like romantic sounds that remind us of the greatness and eternity of the universe, as well as the inner turmoil and pain of a tortured soul. Tchaikovsky was also the first famously gay composer -- "outed" in a tall tale of seduction and suicide.

Behold! A fifty-year-old Tchaikovsky with a young man of just the sort that got him into so much trouble. Is it any wonder young men of taste all over the world still prefer Symphony #6, Pathetíque?

Moscow 1958: tall, Texan and so beautiful, 23-year-old Van Cliburn takes his talents over the Iron Curtain to become the first American to win the Tchaikovsky competition. Seen around the world shaking Kruschev's hand, the young man proved that Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 could bring the United States and the USSR together for mutual appreciation of beauty and refinement.

Charles Calrson

2009-03-02T12:50:00.001-08:00

For once, our university's newspaper, The Minnesota Daily, gets a real, honest-to-goodness scoop:

Student to drop from City Council race, lied about past (Minnesota Daily)

Yowza! This one guy that both my boyfriend A. and I know (and in A.'s case, has worked with!) has just been exposed for several major whoppers he's told over the course of the last year. Both of us are feeling a really weird mixture of emotions, because we both knew Charles was headed toward a bad end, but we were completely duped by his tall tales and had no suspicion that he might actually be living in another world altogether.

Mr. Norris in Minnesota

Earlier last year, A. read a volume of short fiction by Christopher Isherwood. And I really have to give him credit, from almost the day he cracked open the book, he was convinced that Charles was a real-life Minnesota version of Mr. Norris. How true that turned out to be!

I, for one, don't hold any of the deception against Charles. I'm even sort of grateful to him for the whole show. What an amazing accent he has!

Cosi fan ...Fruity?

2009-03-02T09:49:00.001-08:00

All Tutte are Like That.

So I'm working on a big gay classical music panel to represent the Tretter collections.There's all kinds of weird stuff, like the program to a "Schwuler" (gay) setting of Mozart's opera Cosi fan Tutte.

What sort of woman will make a pledge to love someone forever but, fail to remain faithful? Cosi fan Tutte means "all women are like that." For a 2003 Berlin production of the opera, six guys were cast, three in the roles normally given to men and three in the roles normally given to women. The whole translation was moved into the world of contemporary Berlin with its stylish flats and "discotechs."

Tretter Day: Music

2009-02-23T14:55:00.001-08:00

I did a bit of research with Jean Tretter today on all the materials he has related to music and gay men. It's pretty interesting the way Western classical music and gay men go together like vanilla ice cream and warm baked apples. At the top of most people's list is the Russian composer Pyotr Illytch Tchaikovsky, whose homosexual desires were just one of many ways he found himself in conflict with modern society.

I haven't seen this yet, and our archive doesn't own a copy. Anybody want to donate one?

Next week I'll talk more about all the stuff Jean helped me pull out: gay black jazz singers, a gay classical music radio show, Billy Budd, and an all-gay male production of a Mozart opera.

Black Dossier: I heart Reading

2009-02-17T17:28:00.000-08:00

Moore, Alan and Kevin O'Neill and others. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier. La Jolla, CA: America's Best Comics, 2008.

Overall, Black Dossier was a disappointment. I like the idea of a syncretic history of the world through fantastic stories and myths, but unfortunately none of the characters are particularly interesting. Lacking a Batman or other properly mysterious and angsty hero or villain, Black Dossier builds a nice house but doesn't rent it out to anyone.

That said, I did sort of enjoy trying to identify all of the references. In this panel, for example, we have a major figure in ancient Chinese mythology having some fantastic same-sex lovin' with Orlando, a popular figure among historically-minded Western gender-wonks.

So that panel's fun. And I must admit, I don't know if Alan Moore combined the Queen Mother myth with the later trope of the sexual-vampire-witch, or if there is some story about that in the tradition that he read somewhere. Either way, he is definitely a genuine lover of art and literature, and if that comes across to readers, he's still earning his keep.

David Valentine Imagines 'Transgender'

2009-02-17T11:18:00.000-08:00

Valentine, David. Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.

Said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
And the coloured girls go
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo...

I haven't read David's book yet, but I did go to two talks about it, which is probably close to just as good. Here's a tip to remember: if you get a chance to see an academic make a presentation more than once on the same topic, take the chance. I followed the argument much more clearly on the second go-round than on the first. Basically, "transgender" is a term that can and should be contested. Holly, Candy, Little Joe and Sugar Plum Fairy all continue to go to New York poor, young and queer, but they do not use the term "transgender." Meanwhile, all institutions within the community have reified the term "transgender" as the main word for what Sugar Plum Fairy is. A rather classic problem of ontology begins to involve poor Sugar Plum's life when the ontological difference between "trans" and "glb" identities helps Rep. Barney Frank and others to drop them from the Employment Non-discrimination Act (ENDA). The "T" never quite makes it to the table, especially in certain political contexts. This may just say something quite dark about multiple communities' way of thinking about difference.

Tretter Day: Anita Bryant

2009-02-16T13:00:00.001-08:00

Tretter Day

I worked up some text that briefly sums up Anita Bryant's "Save Our Children" campaign here in St. Paul, Minnesota back in 1977. I was particularly struck by this photo of one the local opponents to gay rights. I love how his whole pose and body language says "preacher." Or perhaps, not just preacher but "one crazy-ass holy-roller mofo" would be more accurate. Notice, too, the bowl of oranges -- a nice touch of support for the great Anita, spokeswoman for the Florida Citrus Commission.

Strangely, local gay rights advocates trying to fight this demon were not amenable to Floridian activist Bob Kunst and his supporters in Minneapolis, because St. Paul gays felt it was not a national issue. I don't think they looked closely enough at those oranges!

Hello World

2009-02-16T12:52:00.000-08:00

Hello World,

I'm a graduate student at the University of Minnesota who volunteers some time each week at The Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies. Since I really like blogs and blogging, especially on gay stuff, I'm going to try blogging about some of the cool things I'm reading and experiencing. I'm thinking I'll probably say something about:

my research at the Tretter Collection
my readings on sex in general. Mostly gay-guy oriented, though I do push myself to read and watch all kinds of stuff.