The emergence of queer terminology in a language as gendered as German calls for creative appropriation and disruptive recombination.
Our definitions of “Zoom fatigue” are as varied as our symptoms—from anxiety to loathing to fits of laughter and primal screams. Neta Alexander offers differing perspectives on this new fatigue that has forced its way into our lexicon.
Wandering the streets of San Francisco, browsing the city’s bookshelves, a writer reflects on twenty years of literary and artistic influence, navigating an increasingly unfamiliar landscape in New York City.
Finally becoming comfortable saying “I am a lesbian” in Poland, Zohar Weiman-Kelman unpacks layers of meaning in the Yiddish words for queer identity.
Trained to be producers and consumers in a marketplace of literature, most writers don’t know how to be citizens of a polity. In the concluding essay of the Polity of Literature series the editor, Matthew Stadler, proposes an experiment to help us: The GOAT PoL (The Geopolitical Open Atlas of The Polity of Literature).
In part two, the purposes and ambitions of queer literature change in the ‘80s with the rise of AIDS and a punishing, homophobic backlash. These cultural conditions birthed a new political awareness—one that linked queer communities to other historically marginalized and oppressed people.
Moving back to Beirut after years abroad, Omar Mismar chats with a young barista to discover a new generation of local queer language.
In part one of this candid personal memoir, Michael Bronski recalls the birth, life, and future of a queer polity of literature, circa 1964 to 1980.
On a short trip to document the Aramaic revival, Ben Shields gets lost in a story from which there seems to be no escape.
Tracing the linguistic roots of queer Kyrgyz words, Temir Kalbaev describes their evolution in media and academia from pejorative slur to human rights activism.
In Latvia, the black carnation is much more than a flower. Kārlis Vērdiņš traces the symbol from private gay gatherings to tabloid scandals to contemporary pride.
This foundational text of the Polity of Literature series was written by a Jesuit scholar in the long wake of the May 1968 student uprisings.
