"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."
Chapter 2 of Elizabeth Gaskell's ghost story. Lying on the settle, with the fire burnt out, and the room in total darkness, Graham Coulton dreamed a curious dream. He thought he awoke from deep slumber to find a log smouldering away upon the hearth, and the...
'Houseless--homeless--hopeless!' Many a one who had before him trodden that same street must have uttered the same words—the weary, the desolate, the hungry, the forsaken, the waifs and strays of struggling humanity that are always coming and going, cold, starving and miserable, over the pavements of...
As the leaves turn crisp and the nights grow longer, the Gothic community prepares for its favorite season: Spooktober. October isn’t just another month on the calendar — filled with chestnuts and mushrooms and pumpkin — but a countdown to Halloween. Spooktober is a tradition, a...
We Were Always Here: on Memory, Erasure, and the Persistence of Queer History All month long, we have journeyed through scroll and scripture, painting and poetry, ruin and reliquary, gathering voices, gestures, glances that once defied the world to say: we have always loved differently. These...
Letters in Exile: Rumi’s Longing for Shams al-Din Tabrizi “Since Shams appeared,my heart has been a hundred thousand burning lamps.The world is a candle, and I am the wick:I am consumed in the flame of love.”-- Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi, 13th century, Persia Among the most exalted voices...
The Love That Wrote Itself: Hadewijch and the Ecstasy of the Unknown Beloved “And she beheld me with love,and made me forget all my suffering.”-- Hadewijch of Brabant, Visions and Poems (13th century) In the heart of the 13th century Low Countries, amidst convent walls and cloistered...
Saint Wilgefortis and the Bearded Woman of Lützen: Gender Miracles in Devotional Art A crucified female saint — dressed in noble garments, arms outstretched, and crowned with an improbable beard — stares out from the cross not in agony, but in defiant serenity. This is Saint...
Christina of Sweden: The Queen Who Refused to Be a Woman Crowned queen at the age of six and ruling in her own right by eighteen, Christina of Sweden stood as one of the most enigmatic and transgressive monarchs of the 17th century — a woman...
She Knew Better than Any Man: Female Lovers in Brantôme’s Courtly Chronicles “This reminds me of certain women who love their companions so dearly that they would not share them for all the wealth in the world—jealous as a beggar with his drinking barrel.”-- Pierre de...
The Noble Knight: Gender Ambiguity and Queer Aesthetics in the Portrait of Doña Catalina de Erauso Known as “La Monja Alférez” (The Lieutenant Nun), Catalina de Erauso defied every expectation of early modern gender and class. Fleeing a convent in his teens, assumed male identity, joined...
