This online seminar brings together Andrea Carboni (SHL, Durham) and Professor Michael Bronski (Harvard University) to explore the covers and undercovers of Steward’s work, focusing on three titles held in the Haud Nominandum Collection at Senate House Library: My Brother, My Self; Below the Belt and Other Stories; and Roman Conquests.
The conversation will examine the politics of queer pulp, the emblematic cover art, often featuring the iconic homoerotic imagery of Tom of Finland, and the thematic terrain of Steward’s fiction, from hustler economies and sexual subcultures to questions of identity, desire, and queer self‑fashioning.
Bronski and Carboni will also discuss Steward’s place in queer literary history, the significance of these volumes within SHL’s collections, and the intriguing inscriptions left by the author himself.
The session will last approximately one hour, including a Q&A. The event is free and online, but registration is required.
A cult figure of mid‑century queer culture, Samuel Steward—also known by his erotic pulp persona Phil Andros—moved restlessly between roles: novelist, tattoo artist, pornographer. His Phil Andros books, published from the 1950s onward, blend pulp, eroticism, and social observation.
LOCATION: STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20260921T130000Z DTEND:20260921T140000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR