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The Bookish Queer: Locating Queer Literature, Then and Now
How did queer writers and bookish types find queer content in the past and how they do it today, when so many of the past networks would appear to have dispersed?
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Your Worst Fear and Your Best Fantasy Traced Through Art History
Holding a sign that reads "I am your worst fear, I am your best fantasy," a photograph of a proud and defiant woman at a gay liberation march in the 1970s opens Phaidon's newly published Art & Queer Culture, illustrating the dual visions of queer identity by the field of art history.
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Reading the "Nothings that Are": Craig Dworkin's "No Medium"
“In No Medium Craig Dworkin looks at works that are blank, erased, clear, or silent … point[ing] to a new understanding of media.” So goes the back cover copy of the author’s new book, which was released in March by MIT Press. This paratextual statement, while certainly catchy, is a bit misleading r
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Etched Oddities and a Wandering Skull
The technique of etching has given many a brooding artist a shadowy medium for their art, and while the time-consuming mode of creation has fallen out of mainstream popularity, Moroccan artist Érik Desmazières continues to use etching almost exquisitely in his work.
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Rewriting the Story of Shame and Isolation: The Lambda Literary Awards Turn 25
On Monday night the Lambda Literary Awards turned 25. For those unfamiliar, the Lammys are awards given out to LGBT authors in a variety of categories ranging from serious nonfiction to science fiction. They were started in 1989 by Deacon Maccubbin, founder of the now-shuttered Washington, DC, gay b
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In Faygo Veritas: Shooting the Juggalos
Scorn for redneck culture — often dressed up as ironic appreciation — has long been a standby of American humor, a mechanism by which socioeconomic tension is reduced to a soothing cascade of condescension. It's a classic indulgence of middle class banality, kind of like a mall fountain, but more cr
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Thrivers in the Muck: Matias Viegener (Part One)
Sometimes, it is hard to remember that Social Media came along years after the rise of the personal computer and the Internet, which Al Gore called the “Information Superhighway.” But like the highway in Jean-Luc Godard’s apocalyptic comedy, Weekend (1967), the Internet is littered with refuse and u
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This Book Is About as Fun as a Barrel of Monkeys
The phrase "barrel of monkeys" generally means a bit of crazy fun. In some cases, though, people may use it as an example of something that's less fun, i.e. "this party is way more entertaining than a barrel of monkeys." This contradictory dual meaning makes Barrel of Monkeys a great title for a gra
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The Hidden Beauty of Disease Under Our Skin
Beneath our sheath of skin is an internal world both vast and complex. While most of us rarely get to see it, these workings of our systems and organs are the daily viewing of pathologists, particularly when it comes to disease. A new book of photography takes us into our own interiors, and shows th
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“There can be no immigrants in utopia”: On “Haute Surveillance” by Johannes Göransson
Before we settle into our plush, faux-velvet seats, share bags of popcorn and watch the latest film about zombies who managed to escape from Pittsburgh and its parking lots, does anyone out there dream of making a movie about Jeffrey Dahmer starring Brad Pitt or James Franco?
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Manly Men and Their Discontents: Ben Jones's Men's Group: The Video
“Multiple paper sizes and stocks bound together with a spiral wire and wrapped between thick chipboard covers.” So reads the highly utilitarian description of Ben Jones’ new book in its accompanying press release, but it’s also as good a definition of the different incarnations of “manliness”—the pu
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Grafting Graffiti Style Onto Skin
Graffiti and tattoos seem like total opposities. One is ephemeral, lasting only until it's painted over by the city or other writers, the other is forever, or at least unless you decide to rip the ink back out of your skin. Yet there's been abundant crossover in the aesthetic style, but what's more