Abstract: Recent critical race theory suggests that, in the modern period, categories of race, gender, nation, and sexuality are mutually constitutive and largely indistinguishable. This essay explores the historical co-constitution of Italian racial identity and homosexuality in several works of literature from the early twentieth century, one written in English, the others, in Italian. In […]
Queer Black Italy and the Politics of Experience
I recently took an invaluable and enlightening course designed to help instructors add material on Italians of African descent — or what is increasingly called Black Italy—to the Italian Studies curriculum. The course was a rich resource of information on many aspects of Black Italy, from its history to its presence in contemporary culture. In […]
Queer #me too NYTimes
Like many men, in light of the #metoo movement, I have been led to reexamine my own sexual history. But as someone whose typical partners have been men, the stakes are different. For, according to one thread of #metoo’s logic, when I examine my conscience, I have to reimagine myself as both predator and prey, […]
Apocalyptic Sex
Beyond building a robust and reliable sourdough starter and finally being able to play Chopin’s G minor ballade to its bravura conclusion, the most positive if surprising circumstance to come out of my COVID-19 quarantine is a reinvigorated marital sex life. My husband and I have been together for some fourteen years, and, even before […]
Queer Ventennio – Book Review
Dr. Alessio Ponzio, Assistant Professor of Modern European History and the History of Gender and Sexuality, wrote this review of Queer Ventennio for the Journal of Modern Italian Studies. […]
Queer Ventennio – Alternative Fall English Conference
Watch a brief video presentation on my new book, Queer Ventennio. Produced for Penn State University’s English Program’s 2020 Alternative Fall English Conference, it highlights the book’s argument. […]
Queer #me too
In light of the #metoo movement, I have been, like many men, re-visiting my own sexual history. But because I identify as queer, the stakes are different. For, according to one thread of #metoo’s logic, when I examine my conscience, I have to reimagine myself as both predator and prey, groomer and groomed. The idea […]
More on Those Pesky Pronouns
This fall, for the very first time, I began a class by asking students for their preferred pronouns. It was a class in LGBTQ Studies, and, for some time now, colleagues at other institutions had been making convincing cases for why it was important to begin the course in this way. As it was a […]
Trans-Parentela
I’m in Italy for the summer, and my friends on facebook tend to be pretty queer-friendly, so apparently I have been missing some kind of media (social and mass) frenzy around Caitlyn Jenner’s Vanity Fair Annie Leibovitz photo shoot. Laverne Cox has rightly worried about the fetishizing of trans beauty; obviously, we haven’t made the […]
“Beleaguered” Queer White Male
Some writers have a rule: never write anything negative about another scholar’s work. Some have another: never answer your critics. I was recently accused of having “race fatigue.” The specific charge, leveled against Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, Joan Scott, and me, was directed toward our various critiques of the category of experience, the way the […]