Just Announced: The Children's & YA Book Awards Winners Explore Now

Homintern: How Gay Culture Liberated the Modern World

Add to Wishlist

Homintern: How Gay Culture Liberated the Modern World

eBook

$15.49 ~~$20.00~~ Save 23%

View All Available Formats & Editions

eBook
$15.49 ~~$20.00~~ Save 23% Current price is $15.49, Original price is $20. You Save 23%.

View All Available Formats & Editions

Available on Compatible NOOK Devices and the free NOOK Apps.

WANT A NOOK? Explore Now

Buy As Gift

Related collections and offers

Overview

A landmark account of gay and lesbian creative networks and the seismic changes they brought to twentieth-century culture

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300234992
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	11/21/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	440
File size:	15 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Gregory Woods was appointed to Britain’s first chair in Gay and Lesbian Studies by Nottingham Trent University in 1998. He lives in Nottingham, UK.

List of Illustrations ix

Preface xi

Acknowledgements xiv

1 The Homintern Conspiracy 1

Beginning to Count Themselves 1

Natural Secret Agents and Natural Traitors 6

The Girls' Friendly Society 12

Positions of Influence 22

All Queers Meet Each Other 26

2 Scandal and After 31

The Wilde Case (1895) 31

The Eulenberg Case (1906-09) 42

The Pemberton Billing Case (1918) 44

Getting Away 46

Radclyffe Hall and The Well of Loneliness (1928-29) 49

Dolly Wilde: The Next Generation 54

Lord Alfred Douglas 57

3 The Northern Exotic 61

Moonlight People 61

Lovers of the Beautiful 64

The Russian Ballet 71

The Swedish Ballet 79

Sergei Eisenstein 81

Tamara de Lempicka 84

Rudolf Nureyev 87

4 France and its Visitors 94

The Paris Scene 94

Pedestrians and Pederasts: Americans in Paris 106

The Modern Sapphic Paris 115

Indifferent Tolerance 124

5 Germany and its Visitors 132

The George Kreis 132

The Berlin Scene 137

Magnus Hirschfeld 141

Visitors to Berlin 146

Flirting with Fascism 156

6 Frivolity to Seriousness 165

The Fashionable Vice 165

Modernity Outdated 170

Becoming Serious: Evelyn Waugh 174

The Nancy Poets and Their Detractors 176

Pansipoetical Poets 184

7 Berlin Propagandised 190

Sodom on Spree 190

The Homosexuality of Hitler(ism) 194

Publications and Bookshops 198

Sexual Tourism 201

8 The Southern Exotic 208

That Southwards Drift 208

Capri and its Visitors 214

Sicily and its Visitors 225

The Intolerant South 229

In Every Land an Oriental Colony 234

Tangier and its Visitors 246

The Oriental Occidentalism Yukio Mishima 257

9 The New World 261

Harlem and its Visitors 261

A New Sodom 271

Gay Hollywood 280

New York to Havana and Back 286

Manuel Puig 298

10 The New Politics 303

A Lot of Privacy 303

The 'Good' Homosexual 305

The 'Bad' Homosexual 312

From the Covert to the Overt 319

Culture and Gay Culture 326

Madness Begets Madness 334

Notes 340

Bibliography 380

Index 402

From the B&N Reads Blog

Page 1 of

Editorial Reviews

Woods’ history of the ‘homintern’ is in turn hilarious and horrifying… documents shocking levels of persecution. Homophobia was pervasive and vicious… But this is not a gloomy book. Woods lovingly presents a range of gloriously outrageous gay and lesbian individuals and couples.”—Joanna Bourke, BBC History

BBC History Magazine - Joanna Bourke

"Woods is a born storyteller, and he tells the story of the interlocking, international gay and lesbian networks in an unflaggingly lively way. This is a book that needs to be published."—David Bergman, author of The Violet Hour and Gay American Autobiography: Writings from Whitman to Sedaris

David Bergman

Woods is a knowledgeable and entertaining guide.”—Caleb Crain, The Guardian

Guardian - Caleb Crain

"Without letting the purveyors of clichés about cliquish homosexuals off the hook, this lively history turns those stereotypes on their heads, taking seriously the queer networks that were central to modernism. Richly literary and attentive to networks of both men and women, Homintern also has a wide geographical range. Russian, Scandinavian and South American texts are thoughtfully integrated with accounts of New York, London, Berlin, Paris and their Mediterranean outposts. Gregory Woods writes with an insider’s flair, but does not sugarcoat the histories he tells. Frank about self-destructive behavior, he is also sensitive to divisions among sexual minorities along lines of ideology, class and generation."—Christopher Reed, author of Art and Homosexuality: A History of Ideas

Christopher Reed

"Woods regales the reader with an avalanche of stories, ribald gossip, and lengthy asides that collectively confirm the book’s central thesis: gay culture, or at least gays and lesbians, did indeed liberate the modern world."—Brian Kenney, Booklist

Booklist - Brian Kenney

"Delicious, satisfying reading. Even readers knowledgeable about post-Oscar Wilde gay culture are unlikely to read more than a paragraph or two without learning something they did not know, and I cheerfully confess that my most frequent margin note was '!!!' . . . The range and depth of Woods' scholarship are remarkable, but the power of Homintern owes as much to the unabated vitality of his writing."—Tim Pfaff, Bay Area Reporter

Bay Area Reporter - Tim Pfaff

"Gregory Woods’ Homintern is not just a first-rate work of literary and historical scholarship but a deeply moving narrative in its own right. In its global reach, it has no precedent, yet Woods never sacrifices intimacy for grandeur. In the future I have no doubt that scholars and readers will look to this as an essential text, one of those rare books that make other books possible."—David Leavitt, author of The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer

David Leavitt

Finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards in the LGBTQ Studies category.

Lambda Literary Foundation - Lambda Literary Awards

Homintern shines a fascinating spotlight on the diverse and informal networks of people who made up the gay communities worldwide which helped to shape art in its many forms over the decades, involving poets, dancers, actors, artists, designers, composers, politicians and spies. . . . This is a book which throws unreasonable prejudice in the trash can where it belongs, clears up misleading myths about gay people, and should be on the reading list of every fresher starting a university degree.”—Richard Edmonds, Hiskind

Hiskind - Richard Edmonds

Wood’s is a knowledgeable and entertaining guide.”—Caleb Crain, the Guardian

"Woods regales the reader with an avalanche of stories, ribald gossip, and lengthy asides that collectively confirm the book’s central thesis: gay culture, or at least gays and lesbians, did indeed liberate the modern world."—Brian Kenney, Booklist

"A well-researched, compelling study of how countless gay men have affected, influenced, and restructured the cultural climate for more than 100 years. . . . An information-heavy book that provides a wonderful resource for those interested in learning about the rise of gay poetics at the onset of the 20th century."—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

"Delicious, satisfying reading. Even readers knowledgeable about post-Oscar Wilde gay culture are unlikely to read more than a paragraph or two without learning something they did not know, and I cheerfully confess that my most frequent margin note was '!!!' . . . The range and depth of Woods' scholarship are remarkable, but the power of Homintern owes as much to the unabated vitality of his writing."—Tim Pfaff, Bay Area Reporter

Finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards in the LGBTQ Studies category.

"Without letting the purveyors of clichés about cliquish homosexuals off the hook, this lively history turns those stereotypes on their heads, taking seriously the queer networks that were central to modernism. Richly literary and attentive to networks of both men and women, Homintern also has a wide geographical range. Russian, Scandinavian and South American texts are thoughtfully integrated with accounts of New York, London, Berlin, Paris and their Mediterranean outposts. Gregory Woods writes with an insider’s flair, but does not sugarcoat the histories he tells. Frank about self-destructive behavior, he is also sensitive to divisions among sexual minorities along lines of ideology, class and generation."—Christopher Reed, author of Art and Homosexuality: A History of Ideas

"Woods is a born storyteller, and he tells the story of the interlocking, international gay and lesbian networks in an unflaggingly lively way. This is a book that needs to be published."—David Bergman, author of The Violet Hour and Gay American Autobiography: Writings from Whitman to Sedaris

"Gregory Woods’ Homintern is not just a first-rate work of literary and historical scholarship but a deeply moving narrative in its own right. In its global reach, it has no precedent, yet Woods never sacrifices intimacy for grandeur. In the future I have no doubt that scholars and readers will look to this as an essential text, one of those rare books that make other books possible."—David Leavitt, author of The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer

From the Publisher

★ 2016-03-01
A comprehensive anthropological survey exploring the ways in which the gay community has changed the world. In 1895, Oscar Wilde set a precedent that would change the lives of homosexual men all over Europe—and, eventually, the world. Accused of having same-sex relations, he was prosecuted and sent to jail. Most men accused of homosexual acts would have denied the fact, but Wilde did not. This choice set an example that defined new terms for the inner life of the artist, the aesthete, and, more importantly, the European gay man. It spurred the rise of the modernist sensibilities and underground communities in Paris and Berlin. The universal appeal of the Wilde case also led to conspiracy theories about homosexuals. As Woods (Emeritus, Gay and Lesbian Studies/Nottingham Trent Univ.; The Myth of the Last Taboo: Queer Subcultural Studies, 2015, etc.) explains, "to speak of homosexual internationalism was…to conjure up the threat of subversive conspiracy. In this case, however, the Homintern was understood to be conspiring against the Comintern, rather than in league with it." This conspiracy, however irrational it may seem, fueled the decadence of the 1920s and '30s and allowed homosexual men to travel from Russia to Paris and from Paris to Berlin to Capri and beyond. As a result, artists and writers formulated a new, cross-cultural art practice: "Values previously taken for granted were deliberately being subverted; rules of perspective and harmony, even of logic, were deliberately being flouted; standards of decency and good taste were deliberately being violated." Woods delivers a well-researched, compelling study of how countless gay men have affected, influenced, and restructured the cultural climate for more than 100 years. He also addresses diversity and remains objective, all the while slipping in some personal opinions about political climates across the generations. An information-heavy book that provides a wonderful resource for those interested in learning about the rise of gay poetics at the onset of the 20th century.

Kirkus Reviews

Homintern: How Gay Culture Liberated the Modern World

Homintern: How Gay Culture Liberated the Modern World

eBook

eBook

Related collections and offers

Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Table of Contents

Customer Reviews

Related collections and offers

Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Table of Contents

Related Subjects

Customer Reviews