In Sex, Class and the Theatrical Archive: Erotic Economies , Alan Sikes explores the intersection of struggles over sex and class identities in politicized performances during key revolutionary moments in modern European history. The book includes discussions of sodomitical closet dramas from the decades surrounding the English Glorious Revolution of 1688; the performances of 'Tribades and Amazons', public women of the French Revolution; the 'homophilic elitism' in the early plays of Brecht and Hasenclever from the years just before and after the German Revolution that marked the founding of the short-lived Weimar Republic; and the utopian conception of a Soviet 'New Woman' set to take the stage after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Throughout, Sikes invokes the differences between past and present politicized performances in order to cast our own political imaginings into sharper and more critical relief.

Focuses on four revolutionary eras in European history from the seventeenth to the twentieth century Adopts intersectional analysis to examine what new insights historical analysis might offer to the politics of sex and class in our present day Includes a case study of Nell Gwyn, one of the most famous of the first generation of actresses to appear on the English stage

Autorentext

Alan Sikes is Associate Professor of Theatre Studies at Louisiana State University, USA. He is the author of Representation and Identity from Versailles to the Present: The Performing Subject (2007).

Inhalt

Chapter One: Introduction.- Chapter Two: The Sodomite in the Closet Drama: Pamphlets and Performance in the Era of the Glorious Revolution.- Chapter Three: Tribades and Amazons: Playacting Women of the French Revolution.- Chapter Four: Expressionist Brotherhoods: Homophilic Elitism and the Drama of the Weimar Era.- Chapter 5: Conclusion: Socialized Maternity and Other Utopian Notions.