Appel à contribution : “Expressing Queer Desire in Early Modern Italy”, RSA, date limite le 4 août 2025
Type : Paper Panel
Session Abstract (Max. 300 words) : Desire in the Italian Renaissance is ubiquitous, constantly experienced, discussed, and represented. Petrarch, for example, indulges in detailed descriptions of his state of being possessed by desire, while erotic paintings are populated with Cupids shooting the arrows of love. The period has also often been understood as a pivotal moment in the history of sexuality, particularly for the emergence of codified expressions of homoeroticism. At the same time, however, cities like Florence intensified the criminalization of sexual activity between men.
This wealth of literary, visual, and legal material has been thoroughly explored in scholarship on sex, gender, and sexuality in the Italian Renaissance (Barkan 1991; Pfisterer 2009). This panel intends to engage with this historiographic tradition by re-interrogating this material, and it intends to reframe the period by placing the coeval and capacious term desire at the center alongside the contemporary category of queer. What becomes visible in this archive when viewed through the malleable and fluid category of desire? How were forms of desire that go beyond the poles of heteronormativity and codified pederastic models registered?
The encounter between bodies marked by desire creates new forms and meanings, since desire can move uncontrollably and unpredictably. It constitutes a more expansive term for speaking about encounters between different bodies. This panel embraces the difficulty of writing about queer desire in historical perspective and invites scholars to think imaginatively about queer and trans desire in the Italian Renaissance, in both its presence and its absence.
Disciplines (Select up to 3) : Art and Architecture ; Italian Literature ; Women and Gender
Organizers : Tati Avesani; Marco Pomini
Contact emails : tavesan1@jhu.edu; mpomini1@jhu.edu
CFP Deadline : 4th of August
Session sponsorship : RSA Discipline Representative: Italian Literature
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
inayaallioui (26 juillet 2025). Appel à contribution : “Expressing Queer Desire in Early Modern Italy”, RSA, date limite le 4 août 2025. Collectif d'Historiens de l'Art de la Renaissance. Consulté le 18 août 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/14fnj
