Visit Website Share on Facebook Tweet this Event Download to Calendar Print this event

Wed, May 9, 2012
7:00pm - 9:00pm
William Way Community Center [1315 Spruce St., Philadelphia, PA]
ALL AGES
Visit Website
HOT Event

Beefcake photos in physique magazines; tawdry tales of “perverse” lesbian love; a symbolically-fraught firecracker shooting out of a man’s unzipped pants; and even a mildly raunchy poem about toilet-cruising in an otherwise serious magazine: all were deemed obscene by American authority figures at one point. How did the law of obscenity impact queer history? And what role did “obscene” imagery play in LGBT community formation, activism, and identity? Presented by Professor Whitney Strub of Rutgers University, Strub contends that this “obscene resistance” gives us a useful historical window into the workings of antigay policies as well as the sexual politics of queer self-expression. Free.