Gay artists in modern American culture : an imagined conspiracy /
"Long before gay liberation shattered public silence about homosexuality in the 1970s, says Sherry, gay people - particularly artists and entertainers - were the object of intense public interest. Most of it was hostile: the contradiction between the nation's dependence on gay men for much...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Chapel Hill :
University of North Carolina Press,
[2007]
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Table of contents Table of contents only |
| Summary: | "Long before gay liberation shattered public silence about homosexuality in the 1970s, says Sherry, gay people - particularly artists and entertainers - were the object of intense public interest. Most of it was hostile: the contradiction between the nation's dependence on gay men for much of its cultural development and the revulsion of many Americans toward them yielded a stream of conspiracy thinking. Sherry places conspiracy theories about the "homintern" (the homosexual international) taking control and debasing American culture within the paranoia of the time that included anticommunism, anti-Semitism, and racism." "Sherry suggests that gay conspiracy theories of this era have drawn little critical attention because they met little overt resistance at the time. He argues that gay artists helped shape a lyrical, often nationalist idea of American modernism that served the nation's ambitions to create a cultural empire and win the Cold War. Their success made them valuable to the country's cultural empire but also exposed them to rising antigay sentiment sometimes voiced at the highest levels (by President Richard Nixon, for example). Only late in the twentieth century, Sherry concludes, did suspicion slowly give way to an uneasy accommodation of gay artists' place in American life."--Jacket. |
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| Item Description: | The Cushing Library/Women & Gender Studies copy was acquired as part of The Don Kelly Research Collection of Gay Literature and Culture. |
| Physical Description: | 292 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Awards: | Lambda Literary Award, 2008. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-270) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780807831212 0807831212 |