Queer in Europe takes stock of the intellectual and social status and treatment of queer in the New Europe of the twenty-first century, addressing the ways in which the Anglo-American term and concept 'queer' is adapted in different national contexts, where it takes on subtly different overtones, determined by local political specificities and intellectual traditions. Bringing together contributions by carefully chosen experts, this book explores key aspects of queer in a range of European national contexts, namely: Belgium, Cyprus, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, The Nordic Region, The Netherlands, Poland, Russia and Spain. Rather than prescribing a universalizing definition, the book engages with a wide spectrum of what is meant by 'queer', as each chapter negotiates the contested border between direct queer activist action based on identity categories, and more plural queer strategies that call these categories into question. The first volume in English devoted to the exploration of queer in Europe, this book makes an important intervention in contemporary queer studies.

What’s Queer about Europe? examines how queer theory helps us initiate disorienting conjunctions and counterintuitive encounters for imagining historical and contemporary Europe. This book queers Europe and Europeanizes queer, forcing a reconsideration of both. Its contributors study Europe relationally, asking not so much what Europe is but what we do when we attempt to define it. The topics discussed include: gay marriage in Renaissance Rome, Russian anarchism and gender politics in early-twentieth-century Switzerland, colonialism and sexuality in Italy, queer masculinities in European popular culture, queer national identities in French cinema, and gender theories and activism. What these apparently disparate topics have in common is the urgency of the political, legal, and cultural issues they tackle. Asking what is queer about Europe means probing the blind spots that continue to structure the long and discrepant process of Europeanization.

This is the first volume on the studies of queer identities in Europe to adopt a strong focus on the history of the Baltic region among other countries in Central and East Europe. It unites work by researchers of different European countries that deals with various representations of the queer culture over a period of more than one hundred years. A significant part of the book is dedicated to belletristics, with the contributors offering readings of it with knowledge about ideas circulating in public discourse that have been influential for new discoveries in history, art history, culture studies, communication studies, theology, and narratology, among other fields.

At the height of the Second World War, Switzerland decriminalised homosexuality. At the same time, France chose to introduce a law punishing homosexual relationships in certain circumstances. These two examples illustrate contradictory attitudes adopted by European states towards homosexuals during the Second World War. Going beyond the issue of the persecution of homosexuals and the central role played by Nazi Germany between 1939 and 1945, this book is the first to examine the daily lives of homosexual men and women in wartime. By bringing together European specialists on the subject, it relates a different history, one which was indeed marked by repression but also by enlistment in armies at war and resistance groups, not to mention collaboration. Chapter by chapter, it enables us to better understand why the Second World War was a turning point for gays and lesbians in Europe and why our continent is a leader in the fight against discrimination. For the Council of Europe, this book contributes to two separate programmes, the Passing on the Remembrance of the Holocaust and Prevention of Crimes against Humanity programme and the Promoting Human Rights and Equality for LGBT People programme, within the framework of Committee of Ministers Recommendation CM/Rec(2010)5 on combating discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity programme. It also continues work towards acknowledging all of the victims of the Nazi regime. Régis Schlagdenhauffen is a lecturer at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), head of the gender-based social history department, member of the Laboratory of Excellence “Writing a new history of Europe” (LabEx EHNE) and co-author of the Council of Europe pedagogical factsheets for teachers entitled “Victims of Nazism. A mosaic of fates” (2015).

Europe is a popular destination for LGBTQ people seeking to escape discrimination and persecution. Yet, while European institutions have done much to promote the legal equality of sexual minorities and a number of states pride themselves on their acceptance of sexual diversity, the image of European tolerance and the reality faced by LGBTQ migrants and asylum seekers are often quite different. To engage with these conflicting discourses, Queer Migration and Asylum in Europe brings together scholars from politics, sociology, urban studies, anthropology and law to analyse how and why queer individuals migrate to or seek asylum in Europe, as well as the legal, social and political frameworks they are forced to navigate to feel at home or to regularise their status in the destination societies. The subjects covered include LGBTQ Latino migrants’ relationship with queer and diasporic spaces in London; diasporic consciousness of queer Polish, Russian and Brazilian migrants in Berlin; the role of the Council of Europe in shaping legal and policy frameworks relating to queer migration and asylum; the challenges facing bisexual asylum seekers; queer asylum and homonationalism in the Netherlands; and the role of space, faith and LGBTQ organisations in Germany, Italy, the UK and France in supporting queer asylum seekers.

How have radical print cultures fostered and preserved queer lived experience from the 1960s to the present? What alternative stories about queer life across Europe can visual material reveal? Queer Print in Europe is the first book devoted to the exploration of queer print cultures in Europe, following the birth of an international gay rights movement in the late 1960s. By unearthing these ephemeral paper documents from archives and personal collections, including materials that have been out of circulation since they were first distributed, this book examines how the production and dissemination of queer print intersected with the emergence of LGBTQ+ activism within specific national contexts. This vital contribution to queer history explores borders and political movements, and the ways in which these materials contributed, through their international circulation, to the creation of a 'post-national' queer community. Illustrated throughout with examples of manifestos, flyers, posters, zines and other forms of print media, it features interviews with those responsible for making, distributing or archiving queer print, alongside a series of new theoretical essays that set particular publications and the individuals and groups that produced them in context. The book isolates specific instances of queer print media and scrutinises their design aesthetics, identifying both the significant contribution that queer print has made to histories of LGBTQ+ struggle and to the history of print design.

Queer European Cinema commences with an overview of LGBTQ representation throughout cinematic history, interwoven with socio-political reality in Europe and beyond, to consider trends including the boarding school film, the gay road movie, and queer horror such as the lesbian vampire tale, before analysing case studies from the ‘low culture’ of pornography to the ‘high culture’ of arthouse cinema. This collection of essays explores borders and boundaries of geography, temporality, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and desire in a range of European films at a time when both LGBTQ politics and the concept of Europe are under intense scrutiny in representation and reality, to demonstrate how LGBTQ film can serve as a political tool to create visibility and acceptance as well as providing entertainment. Chapters include an analysis of both trans and femme identities in Academy Award-winning Boys Don’t Cry alongside German film, Unveiled; the intersection of lesbian visibility and the notion of nation on the Croatian screen at its point of entry into the European Union and during the gay marriage referendum; music and its relation to camp in Italian transnational cinema; European lesbian feminist pornography; and an analysis of liminal spaces and citizenship in queer French-language road movies. This book was originally published as a special issue of Studies in European Cinema.

This book explores the alleged uniqueness of the European experience, and investigates its ties to a long history of LGBT and queer movements in the region. These movements, the book argues, were inspired by specific ideas about Europe, which they sought to realize on the ground through activism.

Belgium was the second country in the world to introduce same-sex marriage. It has an elaborate legal system for protecting the rights of LGBT individuals in general and LGBT asylum seekers in particular. At the same time, since 2015 the country has become known as the `jihadi centre of Europe' and criticized for its `homonationalism' where some queer subjects - such as ethnic, racial and religious minorities, or those with a migrant background - are excluded from the dominant discourse on LGBT rights. Queer Muslims living in the country exist in this complex context and their identities are often disregarded as implausible. This book foregrounds the lived experiences of queer Muslims who migrated to Belgium because of their sexuality and queer Muslims who are the children of economic migrants. Based on extensive fieldwork, Wim Peumans examines how these Muslims negotiate silence and disclosure around their sexuality and understand their religious beliefs. He also explores how the sexual identity of queer Muslims changes within a context of transnational migration. In focusing on people with different migration histories and ethnic backgrounds, this book challenges the heteronormativity of Migration Studies and reveals the interrelated issues involved in migration, sexuality and religion. The research will be valuable for those working on immigration, refugees, LGBT issues, public policy and contemporary Muslim studies.

This fully revised textbook focuses on the major topics of globalization.