Like the Dawn of Creation: Byzantine Fragments in the Queer Imagination

This talk explores how Byzantium operates as a queer cipher in modern culture, appearing as an adjectival modifier, “the Byzantine,” rather than as a distinct historical referent. Analyzing Gore Vidal’s 1959 adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly, Last Summer, I demonstrate how Byzantine references encode queer identity through the film’s absent protagonist, whose unspeakable sexuality mirrors Byzantium’s own unintelligibility. Drawing on extensive archival research, I show how “the Byzantine” articulated coded queerness for these writers and artists. My talk proposes reimagining Byzantine art history through modes of “queer fragmentation,” recognizing Byzantine elements across temporal boundaries.

Roland Betancourt is currently the Andrew W. Mellon Professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art and Chancellor’s Professor, Department of Art History, at the University of California, Irvine. His book, Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages, won the Jerome E. Singerman Prize from the Medieval Academy of America. His next book is Disneyland and the Rise of Automation (Princeton University Press, 2026).