EventsImagining Sex, Imagining Us: Pornography, Transnational Print Culture, and the Invention of “Gay Europe”
Carleton University Art Gallery
February 4, 2026
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Headshot photo credit: Jenny Widén/Linköping University
Don't miss this free public talk by João Florêncio!
The circulation of gay erotica and pornography in post-war Europe was central to the development of a shared sense of identity and belonging among European gay men, one which often disrupted the Cold War geopolitical imaginaries of “East” and “West,” and thus their respective boundaries. In this talk, I will sketch those dynamics and the role of transnational print, consumer, and sex cultures in shaping “Gay Europe,” from the immediate postwar decades to the years following the fall of the Iron Curtain. In so doing, I will ask questions about the role played by sexuality and sex media in both reproducing and troubling ideas of European identity, belonging and citizenship that were being advanced at institutional levels as part of the postwar project of European integration. Ideas that remain, to this day, central to the ways in which we understand who counts as “European” and where does “Europe” instead end.
The event is free and open to everyone. No registration is required.
Speaker
João Florêncio is Professor of Gender Studies (Sex Media and Sex Cultures) at Linköping University, Sweden. He is the author of Bareback Porn, Porous Masculinities, Queer Futures: The Ethics of Becoming-Pig (2020) and, with Liz Rosenfeld, of Crossings: Creative Ecologies of Cruising (2025), alongside several peer-reviewed research articles, exhibition catalogue essays, and opinion pieces. He is currently leading the 4-year international research project “The Europe that Gay Porn Built, 1945–2000,” a collaboration between Linköping University, Birmingham City University, and the University of Exeter.