Finding the first homosexuals

19.05.2026 18:15 – 20:00

The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a New Identity 1869-1939 is a major international loan exhibition that illustrates how the European invention of the concept “homosexual” in 1869 forever changed world culture. We’ll see that as language became restricted to but the two opposing sexualities of homo and hetero, art picked up the slack and offered a vastly more expansive vision of sexuality for which there was often as yet no language. The exhibition further considers how the imposition of a European taxonomy of sexuality—following the trajectory of other lines of colonial domination—rewrote indigenous sexuality with the end result that some of the cultures that were once most accepting of sexual and gender differences, including such nations as Iran and China, are now among the most homo and transphobic. In this talk, Katz will analyze a selection of little known LGBTQ works of art from among the nearly 400 works in the original exhibition.

Lieu

Bâtiment: Uni Mail

salle M1160

entrée libre