“Queer Exiles” with Ben Robbins
From Christopher Isherwood to Djuna Barnes, some of the most prolific queer writers of the 20th century wrote in exile. Ben Robbins joins me to explain how and why queer writers connected with each other in exile and how (in)voluntary movement shaped their stories. Ben shares some surprising encounters from the archives and paints a picture of some of the locations of queer exile: Berlin, Tangier and Capri.
References:
Networked Narratives: Queer Exile Literature 1900-1969
Funded by the Austrian Science Fund/FWF (Project DOI: 10.55776/P35199)
https://www.uibk.ac.at/projects/networkednarratives/
Ben Robbins’ “‘Marriages ought to be secret’: Queer Marriages of Convenience and the Exile Narrative” JAAAS: Journal of the Austrian Association for American Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, Dec. 2023, pp. 100–122, https://doi.org/10.47060/jaaas.v5i1.173.
Networks of Anglophone LGBTQ+ Exile Writers
http://queerexilelit.uibk.ac.at/ Robbins, Ben, and Ralph J. Poole. "Introduction: Queer Ruralisms." AmLit – American Literatures 4.2 (2024): 4-21.
Ben Robbins’ Faulkner's Hollywood Novels: Women between Page and Screen (University of Virginia Press 2024) https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5855/
Queer Second Cities
Maria Sulimma
Ben Robbins’ “Christopher Isherwood in Exile”
https://www.huntington.org/verso/christopher-isherwood-exile
Harry Ransom Center
Bryher (Annie Winifred Ellerman)
Oscar Wilde
W. Somerset Maugham
E.F. Benson
John Ellingham Brooks
Romaine Brooks
John Ellerman
Robert McAlmon
Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood
Natalie Barney
Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin
Stephen Spender’s The Temple
Jane Bowles’ Two Serious Ladies
W.H. Auden
Patricia Highsmith
Allen Ginsberg
Claude McKay
Thornton Wilder
Ben Robbins. "Space, Sexuality, and Thornton Wilder's Villa Rhabani." Thornton Wilder Journal 5:1, November 2024, pp. 99-119. DOI: 10.5325/thorntonwilderj.5.1.0099
https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/thornton-wilder/article-abstract/5/1/99/392187/Space-Sexuality-and-Thornton-Wilder-s-Villa?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Open access: https://ulb-dok.uibk.ac.at/urn/urn:nbn:at:at-ubi:3-40689
William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch
Alfred Chester’s Looking for Genet: Literary Essays and Reviews
Susan Sontag
Gore Vidal
Henry James
Truman Capote
Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:
- How does Ben define ‘exile’? How is this similar to and different from ‘expat’?
- How does exile relate to class status and financial means?
- Why are queer networks so important in this context?
- What does Ben say about exile and (involuntary) movement affecting narrative form?
- How do you find out where you can safely travel?
