CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Rentflejsz, Matylda |
|---|---|
| Title | The role of minority press in the creation and negotiation of a queer community in Florence, Italy, in the 1990s: a case study of the magazine "QUIR : il mensile fiorentino di cultura e vita lesbica e gay, e non solo" (1993-1997) |
| Summary | From 'samizdat', to the underground press of the 1960s and 70s, and the ‘zine culture of the 1990s, alternative press has played key roles in the diffusion of information, organisation of resistance, and the formation of community among its readers. Whether born under occupation, censorship, or out of erasure from the mainstream media, alternative press has facilitated the development of a democratic public sphere in which factors like social class, gender, or sexual orientation became criteria for community rather than exclusion. Though some academic attention has been paid to the alternative press of the 1970s homosexual movements, the magazines, newsletters, and ‘zines of the late 1980s and 1990s cannot claim the same. This thesis utilises Critical Discourse Analysis to discuss the Italian magazine ‘QUIR: il mensile fiorentino di cultura e vita gay e lesbica e non solo…’ (1993-1997) and how it utilised the concepts of imagined and emotional communities, subaltern counterpublics, and self determination to create a homogeneous queer community amongst its readership. The thesis finds that the magazine was at the vanguard of the drive for a more intersectional Italian queer movement, both through its use of the term ‘queer’ as an identity term, and the international influences of its creators, yet, despite its early stage success, struggled to endure due to the lack of a clear ‘enemy’ against which to unite its community. |
| Supervisor | Gaspar, Cristian-Nicolae; Pacini, Monica |
| Department | Historical Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/rentflejsz_matia.pdf |
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