Queering Peter the Great: Ways to Conceptualize Tsar’s Transgressive Sexuality

• In Event: Gender and Queer Narratives in 18th-Century Russia

Abstract

The paper considers conceptualizing of Peter I’s sexual anti-behavior as queerness, and explores how queering can be a tool for deconstruction of imperial power scenarios and Russian state building at the micro level of unofficial power relations. That is, how did Peter I’s sexual behavior relate to masculine military culture, the ideas of libertinism and the image of the perfect emperor?

Author

• Hanna Filipova, U of Gothenburg (Sweden)