Jasbir K. Puar,Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times

The importance of studying human–animal relationships and animal subjectivity is increasingly recognised by social and cultural geographers, particularly in agricultural pursuits. Little research, however, has been undertaken on animals in sport, resulting in a limited understanding of the perceptions and treatment of animals in society. To address this concern, we interrogate print media coverage of the construction and positioning of horses and humans in the controversial activity of jumps racing (National Hunt) in Australia between February 2008 and December 2009. We highlight the importance of seemingly contradictory human–animal relationships involving close frequent contact of some jumps racing advocates in contrast to the distanced, mediated relationships of jumps racing opponents. This paper highlights how the particular activity of jumps racing generates specific human–animal relationships and emphasises the need to reflect on the attitudes that shape and constrain human–animal relationships in varying contexts, including how these attitudes are mediated and the potential consequences for humans and other animals. These findings form the basis for a suggested research agenda that recognises the importance and articulation of proximity and mediation in human–animal relationships, particularly those focused on activities labelled ‘sport’.     

Performing post-migration cinema in Italy: Corazones de Mujer by K. Kosoof

Following consideration of the most common representations of migrants in Italian cinema, where they are often portrayed as victimised and minor subjects, this article analyses a film by Davide Sordella and Pablo Benedetti, Corazones de Mujer (2008) as a ‘post-migration alternative’. This film considers a different way of depicting ‘foreigners’, and addresses the complex issues of gender and sexuality as they emerge at the interface between Western and Arab cultures. Within the conceptual framework of Judith Butler's ‘gender performativity’ and Rosi Braidotti's ‘nomadic subject’, this article aims to suggest an alternative way of representing migrants in Italian cinema as agents of social and gender transgressions.     

The Toronto Women's Bathhouse Raid: Querying Queer Identities in the Courtroom

In 1998 the Toronto Women's Bathhouse Committee (TWBC) organized the “Pussy Palace”, Canada's first women's bathhouse event. Held semi‐annually at a gay male bathhouse in downtown Toronto, this newly emergent and potentially transgressive form of identity politics and spatial organizing caught the eye of the policing arm of the state; charges were laid and a public trial ensued. Through an analysis of the court decision and mainstream and alternative press coverage of the Pussy Palace, in this paper we explore the unstable and highly transitory operation of “queer” sexual citizenship within the confines of both the homonormativity of the gay and lesbian community and the regulatory regimes of the nation state. We argue that the policing and judicial institutions of the state seek to neutralize the potential transgressiveness of queer identities by absorbing them into hegemonic nationalist and citizenship discourses.     

The Definition of Spatial Units in Middle Palaeolithic Sites: The Hearth-Related Assemblages

This paper deals with hearth-related accumulations in Middle Palaeolithic sites. Spatial behaviour is a key to understanding the cultural capabilities of ancient hominids. Ethnoarchaeological and archaeological research has shown that hearth-related assemblages are a basic feature in the spatial behaviour of modern and prehistoric hunter–gatherers. In this paper, we propose a methodology for analysing archaeological accumulations and study a series of hearth-related assemblages from the Abric Romanı́ Middle Palaeolithic site (Capellades, Spain). We also analyse the degree of contemporaneity between the different activity episodes documented at each archaeological accumulation. Our results suggest that the characteristics of domestic areas in this site are not substantially different from those observed in ethnoarchaeological contexts and Upper Palaeolithic sites.     

Evgeniia/Evgenii: Queer Case Histories in the First Years of Soviet Power

Citing examples of ‘queer’ (gender- and sexually-transgressive) behaviour taken from psychiatric, criminological and forensic literature, the essay explores the formation of Soviet Russian masculinities and femininities during the two decades following 1917. After surveying the legal tradition regarding same-sex eroticism, it discusses expert views of the ‘mannish lesbian’ and the effeminate male homosexual. Compulsory heterosexuality was a central, unproblematized tool used in the construction of a revolutionary socialist respectability during the 1920s. During the Stalinist Five Year Plans of the 1930s, the male ‘homosexual’ was explicitly outlawed while family obligations became more difficult for women to avoid.     

‘Some Very Queer Couples’: Gender Migrants and Intimacy in Nineteenth-Century America

This article contends that the term gender migrant – which describes a person who changed gender on a long-term basis in their everyday life – offers a useful tool for grappling with the ambiguities of nineteenth-century transgender history. Examining four cases of gender change that circulated in the popular press between the antebellum era and the turn of the twentieth century, the article brings to light intimate relationships that do not fit within the categories of female husbands or sexual inverts that have become familiar to historians of sexuality. Some female-assigned gender migrants lived as men and sought same-gender intimacy in the company of other men. Reading ambiguous cases of love and marriage from multiple angles provides insight into the strategies that resourceful gender migrants used to legitimise their public gender identities.