Continually, for centuries, white Westerners have projected their gay fantasies on the Arab, Persian, and Ottoman other. In The Homoerotics of Orientalism
[Kindle] USC professor Joseph A. Boone examines books, art, photography, and film to consider why. His second chapter covers "Beautiful Boys, Sodomy, and Hamams," with sections on The Hypervirile Male Other, The Cruel Pasha, and The Dancing Boy. His thousand-year survey of literature spans the Rubbiyat to many favorites like Flaubert, Gide, Maugham, and Lawrence Durrell, to a few non-favorites like Norman Mailer's Ancient Evenings and the stereotypes in al-Aswany. His final chapter looks at movies, gay images in pop culture, and porn. The 500-page book is heavily illustrated throughout with 250 b&w images and 22 color plates.
Boone's previous books include Queer Frontiers: Millennial Geographies, Genders, and Generations
and Tradition Counter Tradition: Love and the Form of Fiction.
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