Ad scripta scribenda*
This substack is multiplying, and Queering Classical Antiquity is its first new incarnation
*For the purpose of writing things that must be written
If you are reading this, thank you for remaining subscribed to my Substack thus far. Since starting this endeavor, I have been telling you that I want to share different parts of my writing self, and consequently of my self-self. One of those parts of me is the part that writes about nonnormative gender and sexuality in classical antiquity. If I may elaborate…
You may or may not know that I hold a doctorate in classics from the Graduate Center of The City University of New York (CUNY), and that the focus of my research in my doctoral student days was gender and sexuality—in particular, queer gender and queer sexuality. Even more specifically, I was interested in reading and interpreting ancient Greek and Roman texts through the lens of queer theory. And even more-more specifically, I was interested in making an argument for a camp sensibility in the work of certain Roman poets—first and foremost, that of Catullus, Martial, and Juvenal.
Yes, that’s camp, as in RuPaul’s Drag Race, or the movies of John Waters, or Paris Is Burning, or whatever your own personal touchstone for camp is. Now, if you do not have a personal touchstone for camp, I invite you to stick around and get one. Of course, if that proposition does not appeal to you, you can simply delete this email, or even unsubscribe from my Substack. I promise you I will not be offended. Hundreds of people have already unsubscribed since I first dragged my entire Mail Chimp mailing list into this perhaps quixotic venture.
Now, when I started this substack, all of ten days ago, I thought I was going to jump around from poetry to fiction to creative nonfiction to academic and scholarly writing. But then I put out that survey email with the poll asking you what kind of writing you wanted to receive from me. Of those who responded, 48% said you wanted it all—that is, poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and a hodgepodge I referred to as scholarly-academic-cultural writing. A plurality, but not a majority. And 42% of you said you wanted poetry. Again, a plurality, but not a majority. So what’s a dilettantish polymath to do?
For better or worse, I decided that I would address this situation by producing a series of newsletters, a separate forum for each of my compositional identities—poet, fiction writer, essayist, academic scholar, etc. In fact, I suspect the proliferation will end up being more dizzying even than that list implies, because within several of those areas, I have distinct thematic interests, each of which really needs its own newsletter. For example, stay tuned for Code Gray, a newsletter about being what I call a late boomer—those of us born at the tale end of the baby boom.
So why am I not starting with Code Gray, which is obviously an AWESOME idea for a newsletter that will clearly appeal to many more readers than will Queering Classical Antiquity? Um…cuz I like to do everything the hard way? Yeah, kinda, there is that element of it. But also because, after posting my essay about Catullus 16, I realized how intently I want to dive back into the scholarly research I abandoned after my husband got a tenure track academic job in New York, and I…well…let’s see…how should I put this: did not. 🤷🏻♂️
And it’s even more than that. More than just how intently I want to get back into the fray of queer kinship and camp aesthetics in classical antiquity. The fact is—as weird and delusional and self-aggrandizing as this may sound—there are a lot of other people out there who want me to get back into that fray, too. Some of them are my best friends. Some of them are my mentors. Some of them were my colleagues and peers in the then-burgeoning field of gay/queer approaches to classical studies. Some of them were my fellow graduate students in the 1980s or 1990s or 2000s. (Yes, that is an inordinately long time to have been a graduate student; but that is fodder for another publication.) Some of them are paid subscribers to this Substack!
Okay, enough. What’s past may indeed be prologue, but I do go on sometimes. So let me conclude by saying: If you are psyched about this new incarnation of my Substack, I’m thrilled, and I promise you some juicy posts in the coming weeks. If you are not similarly psyched, I hope you will stick around for the imminent launch of Code Gray, as well as the other new publications for poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction that will take their place as part of this Substack in the coming weeks and months.
Up next in Queering Classical Antiquity: A serialization of my essay on Juvenal’s most obscene satires, originally published in Ancient Obscenities: Their Nature and Use in the Ancient Greek and Roman Worlds, a volume edited by Dorota Dutsch and Ann Suter, and published by University of Michigan Press in 2015.