Queer Italia (Italian and Italian American Studies): Same-Sex Desire in Italian Literature and Film »

Gary P. Cestaro is Associate Professor of Italian language and literature at DePaul University in Chicago.

Gary P. Cestaro's Queer Italia includes essays on Italian literature and film, medieval to modern, and attempts to define a queer tradition in Italian culture. Contributors explore the multiform dynamics of sexuality in Italian texts and aim not to promote the mistaken notion of a single homosexuality through history; rather, they upset and undo the equally misguided assumption of an omnipresent heterosexuality by uncovering the complexities of desire in texts from all periods. Somewhat paradoxically, a kind of queer canon results. These essays open a much-needed critical space in the Italian tradition wherein fixed definitions of sexual identity collapse. Queer Italia will be of interest to a wide audience of Italianists, medieval to modern, and queer cultural theorists.