"Shrieks, Outcries, and Fainting Boys: Homosexuality in the U.S. Cultural Front"
A talk by Professor Aaron Lecklider
Wednesday, February 26, 3:00-4:30pm in Austin 217 (Stern Lounge)
This talk will explore the relationship between homosexuality and the left between 1920 and 1960, particularly emphasizing the ways radical literary and print culture shaped twentieth-century sexual politics. Using fiction, poetry, and other expressive works, Lecklider considers how a complicated discourse around sexual deviance became embedded within proletarian literature, leftist periodicals, and correspondence between writers and publishers on the left during the 1920s and 1930s, and how this process gave way to a more expansive leftist discourse on homosexuality in later decades. Disrupting narratives that emphasize a retrenchment of sexual politics within the U.S. cultural front, this talk suggests directions for a more productive analysis of both the history of homosexuality and leftist literary culture in the decades preceding sexual liberation.
Aaron Lecklider is an Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. His first book was Inventing the Egghead: The Battle over Brainpower in American Culture (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). This talk is culled from his book Love's Next Meeting: Homosexuality and the Left in American Culture (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming).
This talk has been made possible with funds from the Department of English, UConn American Studies, and the Institute of Asian American Studies.
For more information, contact: Professor Christopher Vials at christopher.vials@uconn.edu