Nikolas Kakkoufa receives the Marilena Laskaridis Visiting Fellowship in Modern Greek Studies hosted at the UvA in 2020-2021. The fellowships is sponsored by the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation, which is also the main sponsor of the Marilena Laskaridis Chair of Modern Greek Studies at the UvA (held by Prof. Maria Boletsi).
Nikolas Kakkoufa
‘Word is the flesh’: The Homosexual Body in the Work of Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, and C.P. Cavafy
This project seeks to develop a transatlantic and interdisciplinary model for studying the way the queer body is constructed in the work of three major writers: Walt Whitman (1819-1892), Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), and C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933). Through a comparative reading of works by these three authors, the project traces not only what seem to be continuities within the history of queer writing but also ruptures, as they materialize in these writers’ work. It also examines whether the shift in discourse from sexuality as act to sexuality as identity limits the ways in which the homosexual body itself is allowed to perform in their writings. An analysis of the work of these three writers against a Greek background reveals how the complexity of Cavafy’s example might function as a model for understanding cultural explorations of the queer body not only in modern Greece but also in authors from neighboring geographical areas that Cavafy has influenced with his work.
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