This book is a cutting-edge, interdisciplinary collection of essays by some of today's most forward-thinking scholars. The contributors explore the ways in which the prefix "trans" erupts German identity and the identity of Germany itself. The volume calls German identity into question and examines the ways in which the prefix "trans" is deployed to these ends in relation to national borders, historical limits, political institutions, social practices, and forms of cultural and aesthetic expression. The collection reveals the ways in which the transcendence of national, corporeal, disciplinary, and institutional limits is embodied by the use of the prefix "trans"- and has the potential to do so much more. The volume engages the multifaceted nature of "trans"- and a Germanness that defies geography - to explore how Germans and Germany are increasingly situated "beyond" limits. Collectively, these investigations reveal a radical discourse of Germanness, a discourse with significant implications for historical and contemporary German self-understanding.The book asks the following: What is German identity beyond geography? And what are the promises and perils for Germany, and German identity, in becoming transGerman?

"What if we ascribe significance to aesthetic and social divergences rather than waving them aside as anomalous? What if we look closely at what does not appear central, or appears peripherally, or does not appear at all, viewing ellipses, outliers, absences, and outtakes as significant?" Eccentric Modernisms places queer demands on art history, tracing the relational networks connecting cosmopolitan eccentrics who cultivated discrepant strains of modernism in America during the 1930s and 1940s. Building on the author's earlier studies of Gertrude Stein and other lesbians who participated in transatlantic cultural exchanges between the world wars, this book moves in a different direction, focusing primarily on the gay men who formed Stein's support network and whose careers, in turn, she helped to launch, including the neo-romantic painters Pavel Tchelitchew and writer/editor Charles Henri Ford. Eccentric Modernisms shows how these "eccentric modernists" bucked trends by working collectively, reveling in disciplinary promiscuity, and sustaining creative affiliations across national and cultural boundaries.

A landmark examination of iconic and provocative portraits by Warhol and Mapplethorpe, presented side by side and in depth for the first time Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) are well known for significant work in portraiture and self-portraiture that challenged gender roles and notions of femininity, masculinity, and androgyny. This exciting and original book is the first to consider the two artists together, examining the powerful portraits they created during the vibrant and tumultuous era bookended by the Stonewall riots and the AIDS crisis. Several important bodies of work are featured, including Warhol's Ladies and Gentlemen series of drag queen portraits and his collaboration with Christopher Makos on Altered Image, in which Warhol was photographed in makeup and wigs, and Mapplethorpe's photographs of Patti Smith and of female body builder Lisa Lyon. These are explored alongside numerous other paintings, photographs, and films that demonstrate the artists' engagement with gender, identity, beauty, performance, and sexuality, including their own self-portraits and portraits of one another. Essays trace the convergences and divergences of Warhol and Mapplethorpe's work, and examine the historical context of the artists' projects as well as their lasting impact on contemporary art and queer culture. Firsthand accounts by the artists' collaborators and subjects reveal details into the making and exhibition of some of the works presented here. With an illustrated timeline highlighting key moments in the artists' careers, and more than 90 color plates of their arresting pictures, this book provides a fascinating study of two of the most compelling figures in 20th-century art. Published in association with the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art Exhibition Schedule: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (10/17/15-1/24/16)

What does it mean to look like a lesbian? Though it remains impossible to conjure a definitive image that captures the breadth of this highly nuanced term, today at least we are able to consider an array of visual representations that have been put into circulation by lesbians themselves over the last six or seven decades. In the early twentieth century, though, no notion of lesbianism as a coherent social or cultural identity yet existed. In Women Together/Women Apart, Tirza True Latimer explores the revolutionary period between World War I and World War II when lesbian artists working in Paris began to shape the first visual models that gave lesbians a collective sense of identity and allowed them to recognize each other. Flocking to Paris from around the world, artists and performers such as Romaine Brooks, Claude Cahun, Marcel Moore, and Suzy Solidor used portraiture to theorize and visualize a ""new breed"" of feminine subject. The book focuses on problems of feminine and lesbian self-representation at a time and place where the rights of women to political, professional, economic, domestic, and sexual autonomy had yet to be acknowledged by the law. Under such circumstances, same-sex solidarity and relative independence from men held important political implications. Combining gender theory with visual, cultural, and historical analysis, Latimer draws a vivid picture of the impact of sexual politics on the cultural life of Paris during this key period. The book also illuminates the far-reaching consequences of lesbian portraiture on contemporary constructions of lesbian identity.