Joseph Boone – författare

One of the largely untold stories of Orientalism is the degree to which the Middle East has been associated with "deviant" male homosexuality by scores of Western travelers, historians, writers, and artists for well over four hundred years. And this story stands to shatter our preconceptions of Orientalism. To illuminate why and how the Islamicate world became the locus for such fantasies and desires, Boone deploys a supple mode of analysis that reveals how the cultural exchanges between Middle East and West have always been reciprocal and often mutual, amatory as well as bellicose. Whether examining European accounts of Istanbul and Egypt as hotbeds of forbidden desire, juxtaposing Ottoman homoerotic genres and their European imitators, or unlocking the homoerotic encoding in Persian miniatures and Orientalist paintings, this remarkable study models an ethics of crosscultural reading that exposes, with nuance and economy, the crucial role played by the homoerotics of Orientalism in shaping the world as we know it today.A contribution to studies in visual culture as well as literary and social history, The Homoerotics of Orientalism draws on primary sources ranging from untranslated Middle Eastern manuscripts and European belles-lettres to miniature paintings and photographic erotica that are presented here for the first time.

One of the largely untold stories of Orientalism is the degree to which the Middle East has been associated with "deviant" male homosexuality by scores of Western travelers, historians, writers, and artists for well over four hundred years. And this story stands to shatter our preconceptions of Orientalism. To illuminate why and how the Islamicate world became the locus for such fantasies and desires, Boone deploys a supple mode of analysis that reveals how the cultural exchanges between Middle East and West have always been reciprocal and often mutual, amatory as well as bellicose. Whether examining European accounts of Istanbul and Egypt as hotbeds of forbidden desire, juxtaposing Ottoman homoerotic genres and their European imitators, or unlocking the homoerotic encoding in Persian miniatures and Orientalist paintings, this remarkable study models an ethics of crosscultural reading that exposes, with nuance and economy, the crucial role played by the homoerotics of Orientalism in shaping the world as we know it today.A contribution to studies in visual culture as well as literary and social history, The Homoerotics of Orientalism draws on primary sources ranging from untranslated Middle Eastern manuscripts and European belles-lettres to miniature paintings and photographic erotica that are presented here for the first time.

Traces of Herman Melville are everywhere. Works directly or loosely inspired by the nineteenth-century writer abound, from adaptations and artistic experiments to parodies and cheeky references. They are as distinct as Sena Jeter Naslund’s novel Ahab’s Wife, Laurie Anderson’s mixed-media spectacle Songs and Stories from Moby-Dick, Maurice Sendak’s queer illustrations of Pierre, and the collaborative Emoji Dick. Melville turns up in opera, concrete poetry, auteur cinema, monumental murals, and sperm whale–sized sculptures. Why are so many artists drawn to Melville? What does his continuing presence say about contemporary culture?Charting how a vast variety of writers, filmmakers, and artists channel Melville, Joseph Allen Boone offers new insights into the author, his works, and his many legacies. He argues that contemporary artists are drawn to Melville’s patchwork aesthetics, especially his mingling of genres and media and his prolific borrowings from popular and high culture. Boone’s cases range from artists drawing on the use of whalebone in nineteenth-century fashion to critique gender roles to those obsessed, like Melville, with size and monumentality in ever-proliferating artworks. Other contemporary artists find Melville’s environmental themes strikingly prescient, turning to his work to examine waste, extinction, and planetary crisis. Tracing a once nearly forgotten author’s improbable contemporaneity, The Melville Effect sheds light on how artists turn to literary pasts to make sense of the present and create art for the future.

Traces of Herman Melville are everywhere. Works directly or loosely inspired by the nineteenth-century writer abound, from adaptations and artistic experiments to parodies and cheeky references. They are as distinct as Sena Jeter Naslund’s novel Ahab’s Wife, Laurie Anderson’s mixed-media spectacle Songs and Stories from Moby-Dick, Maurice Sendak’s queer illustrations of Pierre, and the collaborative Emoji Dick. Melville turns up in opera, concrete poetry, auteur cinema, monumental murals, and sperm whale–sized sculptures. Why are so many artists drawn to Melville? What does his continuing presence say about contemporary culture?Charting how a vast variety of writers, filmmakers, and artists channel Melville, Joseph Allen Boone offers new insights into the author, his works, and his many legacies. He argues that contemporary artists are drawn to Melville’s patchwork aesthetics, especially his mingling of genres and media and his prolific borrowings from popular and high culture. Boone’s cases range from artists drawing on the use of whalebone in nineteenth-century fashion to critique gender roles to those obsessed, like Melville, with size and monumentality in ever-proliferating artworks. Other contemporary artists find Melville’s environmental themes strikingly prescient, turning to his work to examine waste, extinction, and planetary crisis. Tracing a once nearly forgotten author’s improbable contemporaneity, The Melville Effect sheds light on how artists turn to literary pasts to make sense of the present and create art for the future.