How to Be Queer

"In recent years, sexual fluidity has increasingly entered mainstream consciousness. However, the ancient Greeks got there long ago, and often with little angst and much wit, insight, and depth. Surviving texts from Archaic and Classical Greece offer glimpses of queer love and life in poetry, prose, and plays They also make evident a Greek willingness to countenance and experimentation with sexuality, gender, and the erotic. As classicist Sarah Nooter argues, we have quite literal guides among ancient poets and thinkers as we navigate the "new" forms of being that are finding their place in our society. This volume aims to appeal to readers interested in ancient conceptions of sexuality and in finding connections across time to their own identity. Like several recent contributions to the series, this volume will take an anthological approach, drawing on writers from the Archaic to the Hellenistic World including Homer, Sappho, Pindar, Plato, Aristophanes, Euripides, Theocritus, and Plutarch. Since much of the poetry in this volume derives from fragments of lyric poetry, many selections present short, interlacing narratives of same-sex and pansexual encounters and relationships, in addition to expressions of sexual longing and identification. A few examples give more detailed accounts of queer desire and devotion. The book also includes short excerpts from the stage that feature experimental takes on gender and longer passages from Plato and Xenophon's dialogues on the nature or eroticism"--