Suchergebnisse

"Dressy men as a type of celebrity have played a distinctive part in the cultural - and even in the political - life of Britain over several centuries. But unlike the twenty-first-century hipster, the dandies of the British past provoked intense degrees of fascination and horror in their homeland and played an important role in British society from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. 0This book - illustrated with contemporary prints, portraits and caricatures - explores that social and cultural history through a focus on the macaroni, the dandy and the aesthete. The first was noted for his flamboyance, the second for his austere perfectionism and the third for his sexual perversity. All were highly controversial in their time, pioneering new ways of displaying and performing gender, as demonstrated by the impact of key figures such as Lord Hervey, George 'Beau' Brummell and Oscar Wilde. 0This groundbreaking study tells the scandalous story of fashionable men and their clothes as a reflection of changing attitudes not only to style but also to gender and sexuality"--Publisher's description

Intro -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction -- Part One: "Dammee Sammy you'r a sweet pretty creature" -- 2. Macaronis -- 3. Men of Feeling -- 4. The Later Eighteenth Century: Conclusions -- Part Two: "Corps de beaux" -- 5. Regency Dandies -- 6. Byronists -- 7. The Earlier Nineteenth Century: Conclusions -- Part Three: "An unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort" -- 8. Aesthetes -- 9. New Men -- 10. The Later Nineteenth Century: Conclusions -- References -- Index.

Dominic Janes is professor at the University of the Arts, London, and a reader in cultural history and visual studies at Birkbeck, University of London. He is the author of several books, including God and Gold in Late Antiquity and Victorian Reformation: The Fight over Idolatry in the Church of England, 1840-1860.

What can the past tell us about the future(s) of the body? The origins of this collection of papers lie in the work of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities which has been involved in presenting a series of international workshops and conferences on the theme of the cultural life of the body. The rationale for these events was that, in concepts as diverse as the cyborg, the questioning of mind/body dualism, the contemporary image of the suicide bomber and the patenting of human genes, we

Abstract
The minutely documented diaries of an 'everyman' such as George Lucas enable us to view the complex pleasures and challenging realities of the post-war queer quotidian in remarkable detail. A sample of the years after 1957, when Lucas was aged in his thirties, suggests that more attention needs to be paid to age-differential relationships and to the problematic aspects of the sexual idolization of young men. Lucas's respectably boring career and Catholic faith can, however, be understood as having provided the stability on which his emotional survival depended, helping us to view other such unglamorous queer lives with greater empathy.

Abstract
The records of student societies show that cross-dressing was a very popular practice at Cambridge University from the second half of the nineteenth century not only in drama but at a wide range of social events. Male and female students were segregated from one another in single-sex colleges because of the perceived moral dangers of co-education. One result of this was that plays were acted entirely by men or by women. Men's performances of female glamour were sexualized in ways that appeared to confirm cross-sex desire but also contained the potential for flirtation with same-sex eroticism. Some student male actors began to accentuate knowingly queer elements of cross-dressing during the 1920s at a time when homosexuality was becoming more widely discussed in association with gender inversion. The authorities, meanwhile, had become less worried about preventing romantic liaisons between members of the opposite sex than they were about the possibility of same-sex scandals. Drama societies that recruited from across the University began to debate the admission of women members as a way of preventing the student stage from becoming associated with homosexuality and effeminacy. Productions in which men and women only performed as their own sex restored an appearance of heterosexual normality. Cross-dressing had a long afterlife in burlesque reviews in which the audience could be led to understand that it was camp homosexuality that was being parodied.

In recent years Margaret Thatcher has come to be represented as a gay icon by a number of prominent right-wing gay men in Britain. This appears to clash with her record in office, on the basis of which she has previously been seen as a staunch enemy of gay liberation. The origins of
a queer presentation of the former Prime Minister lie in the attacks made upon her during her time in office which portrayed her as androgynous and perverse. Such attacks were based on the complicated and ambivalent position she occupied by virtue of being a radical pioneer in her career and
a believer in traditional moral standards. Aspects of her ambiguous image were subsequently available for appropriation by interest groups, such as Conservative gay men, who wished to obscure the political record of her government in the context of attempts to legitimate their status within
their party in the twenty-first century. There has been extensive study of the ways in which movie stars and other public figures have been established as inspirational figures for the gay community, but the example of Thatcher is exceptional in that she was previously widely attacked for
presiding over an allegedly homophobic government. The study of the queer afterlife of Margaret Thatcher as a gay icon, therefore, develops understanding of the ways in which the canon of gay iconicity is a contested cultural field.

This pioneering collection of essays explores the intertwined histories of martyrdom and terrorism from antiquity to the twenty-first century. Christian and Islamic traditions of moral witness and debate over the justified use of militant sacrifice are situated in relation to the development of Western nationalism, with a particular focus on the French Revolution and imperialism.

Many of those committing recent terrorist attacks have been intent, and have often succeeded, in killing themselves in the process. This volume explores and compares religious and secular traditions of martyrdom and terrorism. Through multidisciplinary analyses, this volume seeks to provide a new and exciting opportunity to develop a comparative history of the practices and discourses of terrorism and martyrdom from antiquity to the twenty-first century