Exchanges of women between men occur regularly in Greek tragedy—and almost always with catastrophic results. Instead of cementing bonds between men, such exchanges rend them. They allow women, who should be silent objects, to become monstrous subjects, while men often end up as lifeless corpses. But why do the tragedies always represent the transferal of women as disastrous?

Victoria Wohl offers an illuminating analysis of the exchange of women in Sophocles' Trachiniae, Aeschylus' Agamemnon, and Euripides' Alcestis. She shows how the attempts of women in these plays to become active subjects rather than passive objects of exchange inevitably fail. While these failures seem to validate male hegemony, the women's actions, however futile, blur the distinction between male subject and female object, calling into question the very nature of the tragic self. What the tragedies thus present, Wohl asserts, is not only an affirmation of Athens' reigning ideologies (including its gender hierarchy) but also the possibility of resistance to them and the imagination of alternatives.

If a creative individual identifies as queer or trans, does that fact belong solely to the realm of biography, or does it pertain to their artistic achievement? In Queer and Trans Aesthetics, Lloyd Whitesell discusses literature, visual culture, audio-visual media, music, and performance from the 19th to the 21st century. Through this analysis, Whitesell develops a systematic framework to enrich our understanding of LGBTQ aesthetics and cultural production. He traces the history of queer aesthetic inquiry, develops a justification for a synthetic approach, identifies a fund of expressive strategies motivated by queer subjectivity, and highlights how such strategies create affinity across differences of gender, race, local context, and artistic media.

Rooted in a gender-inclusive theory of queer/trans subjectivity, the book draws on testimony from people of diverse backgrounds, genders, and races. Whitesell engages with debates in the existing scholarly literature while making connections between a wide range of artists: some from mainstream canons, some established subcultural figures, and others only now emerging as notable contributors to queer culture. The book explores five expressive archetypes or poses which have had profound significance in queer art traditions: the Monster, the Victim, the Trickster, the Dandy, and the Dreamer. Each offers a repertoire of creative responses to social oppression and configures queer subjective experience in a unique way. With its unique systematic approach, Queer and Trans Aesthetics enhances our knowledge of queer aesthetic traditions across genres and time.

Forges a new understanding of how these two Lusophone nations are connected

The closely entwined histories of Portugal and Brazil remain key references for understanding developments—past and present—in either country. Accordingly, Fernando Arenas considers Portugal and Brazil in relation to one another in this exploration of changing definitions of nationhood, subjectivity, and utopias in both cultures. Examining the two nations’s shared language and histories as well as their cultural, social, and political points of divergence, Arenas pursues these definitive changes through the realms of literature, intellectual thought, popular culture, and political discourse.