John Boswell

I read his first book, which is really good and raises interesting issues about medieval culture beyond the subject of homosexuality, the focus of the book. His last book on same sex unions in medieval Europe was received more negatively than the first book. I did not know him and did not have him.

He was a Yale professor. He died of AIDS, I believe. His final Same-Sex Unions blessed by the Medieval Church book made his famous.

I remember he died just as I was discovering his work, which was shocking to me.

He died at age 47, per wikipedia.

Just another example of the great minds AIDS took away in their prime.

Link to his book on Amazon

He tried to pick me up once at a dance at Yale for a gay studies conference in 1990 (I was 24 at the time). I remember being disappointed he was not as handsome as he seemed on his book jackets (I had read his first book and the introduction of his 2nd one by that time.) I also remember thinking at the time, "Wow--John Boswell is dancing with me and trying to pick me up!" but I also remember being weirded out that he snapped his fingers while he danced. So I did not take the bait, and moved away.

In retrospect, I wish I had gone for it.

R2, he was famous long before his book on same sex unions. He won the National Book Award for his second book "Christianity, Homosexuality, and Social Tolerance." That is the book that made his career when he was only thirty, early for an academic to write a second book and win a big award, and get a full professorship.

Which one of the Boswell Sisters was he?

Cutie.

R9 that's what got him in trouble.

I bet everybody wanted to fuck him - and he obliged.

He died on Christmas Eve.

How peculiar that someone up above would be "weirded out" by a man snapping his fingers while dancing -- my, what precious little worlds we inhabit. On to JB himself, I knew him at college and he was charm incarnate -- and so scaldingly intelligent that his mind in and of itself was aphrodisiac enough.

LOL, I find clicking your fingers while dancing very "white boy" and creepy too.

I just taught a class and used his first book. It's somewhat dated, and some of his arguments are better than others, but still useful.

r6, he died of AIDS, are you sure you wish you had gone for it? His snapping fingers saved your life.

[quote]How peculiar that someone up above would be "weirded out" by a man snapping his fingers while dancing -- my, what precious little worlds we inhabit.

I was 24 years old and cute. I went home with someone else much younger and closer to my age that night.

[quote] On to JB himself, I knew him at college and he was charm incarnate -- and so scaldingly intelligent that his mind in and of itself was aphrodisiac enough.

Mary! It's clear you had a thing for him. Clearly that's why you're being cunty about my rejecting him.

You're the one being cunty, r17. It's clear you're quite vapid.

I went to Yale about that time. Although I knew about Boswell, I never met him. Being completely in the closet, I would never have searched him out.

Has anyone read his stuff at a really deep level?

Porn Star Colby Jansen has the name Boswell tattooed on his arm. I've wondered if that was in tribute to John Boswell and his work. Is Colby an intellectual?

I think the true vapidity on this board is plain for all to see. Let's just be glad JB isn't around to have to endure it. He was way too cool for the likes of Mr No-Snapping-Fingers-Allowed in any case. (WHAT A WEIRD THING TO EVEN THINK ABOUT !!!!!)

[quote]I think the true vapidity on this board is plain for all to see. Let's just be glad JB isn't around to have to endure it. He was way too cool for the likes of Mr No-Snapping-Fingers-Allowed in any case. (WHAT A WEIRD THING TO EVEN THINK ABOUT !!!!!)

Well, don't worry about it further, dear: I am sure he was extremely attractive by [italic]your[/italic] standards!

[quote]R6 I also remember being weirded out that he snapped his fingers while he danced. So I did not take the bait...

Perfectly fair. It's well known that most people who snap their fingers while dancing are serial killers.

[italic]A narrow escape!

"I think the true vapidity on this board is plain for all to see."

It's not just this board. I'm r15 who just taught a class using his first book and I only attracted 9 students.

Yes dora dumbfuck, R16, because in 1990 NOBODY had ever heard of safe sex.

I knew him casually at Yale. I was a grad student and he was a good friend of one my favorite profs. He was cute, witty, outrageous and nelly. I loved him.

I knew him as well at Yale and, believe me, was not interested in whether he snapped his fingers or not. We were grown ups then. Sigh .....

More, please, R28.

Well one of you at least must have fucked him. Who had him? What are the details? Talented mouth and hole?

Oh god, these people attracted to his transcendent intellect need to get over themselves. If that's all you care about go fuck Harold Bloom.

He looked hot with the goatee!

Hoping that's an attempt at humor, R32.

RIP.

[quote]I knew him as well at Yale and, believe me, was not interested in whether he snapped his fingers or not. We were grown ups then. Sigh .....

Well, since you said you were also a college student at William and Mary with him, you must be in your seventies (!!!). Finger-snapping must have been considered really "hep" back then, as was the Lindy, and the Bunny Hug.

If we get lucky, R35, you won't get old enough for people to make lame jokes about your age.

R14, who is that emaciated little boy with the pretty face?

rest sweet brilliant child, up on ur cloud of sweet love.

we miss u.

the world is thine...

From his Wikipedia biography:

[quote]He was partnered with Jerone Hart for some twenty years until his death

So, r6, when he tried to pick you up, either he was in an open relationship with Hart, or cheating on him. Either way he was well into his relationship and sick (no pun intended) of home dick.

And finger snapping is all about who is doing it and how. It runs the gamut from very square to very cool. On him and his preppie looks it probably looked very corny.

The fuck is you diagnosis R39? Never had the fun of being a cute twink and cruising Ivy League professors?

Snap her face!

Snap her face VICIOUSLY!

Jerone Hart was a hot Daddy:

More:

‘To live in one’s memory is never to die.’

I think his "Revolutions, Universals, and Sexual Categories" is more useful and more fully defensible than is "Same-Sex Unions," which is more stimulative than persuasive. However, his stressing the time-specific diversity of social mores and their change (and sometimes intentionally distorted recollections) over time was helpful for more-general audiences.

Being reminded that just because spokespeople for a locus of power and control claim that present positions are immutable and historical doesn't make it so. The Catholic Church, for example (and Boswell, poor thing, belonged to it) always was like a dinosaur dragging a heavy tail behind it to wipe out the historical record so that its present-day proclamations could be framed as eternal and fixed. The entire canon of the New Testament is the result of careful editing, outrageous rewriting and willful destruction of other texts contradicting the emerging mythos.

But there's an element of neediness at times in Dr. Boswell's assertions. No one can argue against essentialism while belonging to an institution that is less concerned about objective reality than the assertion of transcendent reality about which it has the last (if changing) word. It felt like, among his more steady motives, Maybe Boswell NEEDED to find that his Church was more reasonable in the past about the range of sexual and interpersonal relationships than is usually realized, as a way of defending himself and his sexuality against a damning judgment. But maybe that's reading more into it than is right. Just maybe. But it's also related to the problems with his essentialism, which can be used to argue against his own quasi-constructionist positions.

Finally, his work was early enough to avoid the full stench of the postmodern and/or social constructivist confusions that led to the present-day politicalization and reverse-nominalism that leaves us with Orwellian Academism masquerading as Gaia's Apotheosis. "The Victim as Necessary Hero," "You Are Damaged and Therefore Superior" and "Anything is Better Than What Heterosexual White Men Say" are not the basis for a workable counter to today's dangerous and complex world.

r45 Social constructionism was nearing its hegemony in the academy in the mid to late 80s and early 90s in the field of social history, gender and sexuality in particular. Weeks and Demilio had reinterpreted Marxist historiography with strong influences from certain strands of radical sociology (Mary Mcintosh's structuralism and labeling theory) as applied to sexuality, which dovetailed strongly with an almost dogmatic Foucauldian consensus, so Boswell's mild essentialism was attacked by both conservative and radical historians - at times it seemed Halperin and his ilk were more enraged and their criticisms seemed more personal than the conservative roman catholic scholars who were just as critical but less vitriolic. Chauncey, though he mellowed in a later years, was a strong constructionist partisan as he was trained mainly in women's (later gender) history under Nancy Cott in the early 80s as I recall. Queer Theory was yet to dominate the field but the groundwork had been laid with the strong aversion of anything that seemed even mildly "essentialist" a term that was caricatured as a term of abuse and insult. Boswell was useful as a critique of some of these excesses and the paper on Universals and Categories you referenced was helpful in that regard. Of course, Boswell had personal and religious biases that shaped his theories but no more or less so than his critics. While the humanities went off the post-structuralist deep end in the 90s, the sciences, especially biology and genetics, came to an opposite consensus that sexuality isn't tabula rasa that can be radically altered by historical forces but is to a large degree constrained by human nature and the slow rate of evolutionary change. This scientific consensus made strong social constructionism a logical impossibility. I always enjoyed reading Rictor Norton, a fairly obscure independent british academic - a curmudgeon really - who gleefully skewered the excesses and pretentions of queer theory and social constructionism. His website makes for a fun read...

Jesus, I hate the way academics use words.

I knew him as Boswell John Boswell.

Fucking Harold Bloom? Now THERE'S a concept...... though I assume some poor sod at some point her sorry academic aspirational life.

What is Callum Blue? Sounds like an invented name. Does it do BLUE movies LOLOLOLOL .......

[quote] Porn Star Colby Jansen has the name Boswell tattooed on his arm. I've wondered if that was in tribute to John Boswell and his work. Is Colby an intellectual?

Spoiler: Boswell was the name of his childhood sled.

His work was essential for exploring the various attitudes—not just oppression—towards homosexuality in medieval Europe. But his arguments were often tendentious and went beyond the evidence, or even misrepresented it. His last book, claiming that same-sex marriage was institutionalized in the medieval churches, was ripped apart in an excoriating, detailed review by Daniel Mendelsohn. Alan Bray's *The Friend* went over much of the same ground more soberly and interestingly.

I read [italic]Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality[/italic] when I was in college, but I had no idea that he was a blond twink—I envisioned him as a fusty older academic.

He had a long-term partner since 1974 but still managed to get enough strange bumfuls of cum to contract AIDS.

Nice work, genius.

Did he infect his partner?

R15 I guess his stuff is "somewhat dated" seeing as how he seemed to specialise in abstract stuff from a millennium ago.

Wow. I love this thread. Who knew there are so many (read: two to three) bulldogs on DL?

Is Boswell’s headstone epitaph at R44 a playful diss to Columbia grads?

Fab thread. Ta for posting other pics of him. Clearly the book jacket photo was the equivalent of that on Capote’s first book!

Chrst, Homo & Social Tol was dazzling in its erudition.

I’m ordering the book after having read this thread, r58.