The Gay South

Regional variation, race, gender presentation, and class differences mean that there are many “Gay Souths.” Same-sex desire has been a feature of the human experience since the beginning, but the meanings, expressions, and ability to organize one’s life around desire have shifted profoundly since the invention of sexuality in the mid-19th century. World War II represented a key transition in gay history, as it gave many people a language for their desires. During the Cold War, government officials elided sex, race, and gender transgression with subversion and punished accordingly by state committees. These forces profoundly shaped gay social life, and rather than a straight line from closet to liberation, gays in the South have meandered. Movement rather than stasis, circulation rather than congregation, and the local rather than the stranger as well as creative uses of space and place mean that the gay South is distinctive, though not wholly unique, from the rest of the country.

Seven Magic Years

This chapter focuses on the “seven magic years” of Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers (1933–40), the first all-male dance company that performed a repertory of hyper-masculine dances throughout the college and sorority circuits in the Depression-era United States. It elucidates the groundbreaking company’s history through details from the correspondence between Shawn and Lucien Price, an editor at the Boston Globe and one of the earliest and most vital supporters of Shawn’s all-male experiment. Price mentored Shawn in the codes of gay history, culture, and literature, all of which made their way into Shawn’s choreography. Based on details from Price’s private journals, the chapter reveals their shared vision and pursuits to liberate societal attitudes toward homosexuality. It also explores Shawn’s ongoing attempts to gain critical attention within the sphere of modern dance, especially from New York Times dance critic John Martin.