European journal of American studies
11-3 | 2017
Special Issue: Re-Queering The Nation: America’s
Queer Crisis
Introduction: America’s Queer Past, Present, and
Future
Francisco Costa
Electronic version
URL: [Link]
DOI: 10.4000/ejas.11872
ISSN: 1991-9336
Publisher
European Association for American Studies
Electronic reference
Francisco Costa, « Introduction: America’s Queer Past, Present, and Future », European journal of
American studies [Online], 11-3 | 2017, Online since 27 January 2017, connection on 19 April 2019.
URL : [Link] ; DOI : 10.4000/ejas.11872
This text was automatically generated on 19 April 2019.
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Introduction: America’s Queer Past, Present, and Future 1
Introduction: America’s Queer Past,
Present, and Future
Francisco Costa
1 LGBTQ social, cultural, and political issues have become a defining feature of twenty-first
century American life, transforming on a national, international and transnational scale a
number of institutions. This special issue of the European Journal of American Studies sets
out to stage a timely and much-needed conversation between American Studies and
Queer Studies, in order to address America’s ever-changing position in relation to LGBTQ
issues.1
2
Silenced, hidden, censored, hinted, claimed, or celebrated, queer dynamics have
always been anintegral part of American culture and history. Much has changed
particularly in this still young twenty-first century: films and television shows now
feature openly gay characters and themes, which are celebrated by mainstream audiences
and achieve both commercial success and win major industry awards; same-sex marriage
has emerged as the most important civil rights cause for powerful organizations, such as
the Human Rights Campaign; the end of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy now
allows gay men and women to serve openly; urban campaigners and civic promoters
encourage business districts directed to LGBTQ communities as a means for achieving
visibility and equality; and multibillion-dollar markets targeting LGBTQ tourists are
rapidly increasing.
3
For many, such expressions of LGBTQ identity in the public sphere provide
evidence of visibility, equality, and true social and political progress. Yet in the past
decade, more radical activists and scholars have addressed such changes not as
progressive signs of equality and liberation, but as responses directly linked to an
authoritative and dominant brand of neoliberal politics. Lisa Duggan, for example, has
identified these developments as evidence of “the new homonormativity... a politics that
does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions but upholds
and sustains them” (50). Following this rationale, established LGBTQ organizations
European journal of American studies, 11-3 | 2017
Introduction: America’s Queer Past, Present, and Future 2
increasingly embrace agendas that compete for acceptance within contemporary
economic and political systems, thus abandoning earlier commitments to protecting
sexual freedoms, such as those who challenge serial monogamy and those—including
bisexual, pansexual, transgender, intersex constituencies—who feel subjugated by a
binary gender or sex system.
4
This special issue of the European Journal of American Studies has found its impulse
in these debates and seeks to contribute to this conversation by addressing the multitude
of America’s queer expressions and dynamics. The seventeen articles in “Re-Queering the
Nation: America’s Queer Crisis” are organized in four separate sections, and taken
together offer examinations of the place, role, use, and power of queer expressions and
dynamics in the face of a rapidly changing twenty-first century America. This issue
includes contributions by authors from across the globe and from a variety of disciplines
(ethnic and postcolonial studies, performance studies, literature, history and politics, film
and television studies, cultural studies, anthropology and sociology, and law and
religion). These authors combine disparate theoretical fields of knowledge to explore the
multiple convergences between American and Queer Studies in innovative and
compelling ways. The articles do so by examining cultural, political and social
particularities and differences of queer America, by presenting new analytical
frameworks for talking about LGBTQ culture and history that expand and challenge
current models of identity and community formation, and finally by proposing models of
political and cultural resistance in America. Ultimately, “Re-Queering the Nation:
America’s Queer Crisis” seeks this way to offer examinations and re-examinations of
America’s queer past and present, and point to America’s queer future.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Duggan, Lisa. The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy.
Boston: Beacon Press, 2003. Print.
NOTES
1. This special issue would not have reached its completion without the exemplary guidance and
support of Marek Paryż, EJAS Senior Editor, the peer reviewers who anonymously shared their
expertise, and the contributors who wrote stimulating essays.
European journal of American studies, 11-3 | 2017
Introduction: America’s Queer Past, Present, and Future 3
AUTHOR
FRANCISCO COSTA
University of East Anglia
European journal of American studies, 11-3 | 2017
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