Mapping Queer Exile – A research project rethinks literary tradition and cosmopolitanism
Queer exile is rarely a story of arrival. It is a story of movement, of being pushed out, and of finding ways to exist in between places. Approaching queer exile through the lens of interconnectedness – across vastly different locations – is the central motivation behind the project “Networked Narratives: Queer Exile Literature 1900–1969,” funded by the FWF. It offers a new perspective on queer exile and cosmopolitanism within a literary framework. The project shifts the focus from isolated communities to interconnected networks and establishes a crucial link between law, exile, and literature.
“It challenges the idea that each of these exile communities existed in isolation,” says its initiator, Benjamin Robbins, who did not originally set out reading the works that form his project’s corpus with a clear academic agenda. “At first, it was just out of personal interest. It wasn’t clear yet that this would become a research topic.” What began as a curiosity about writers such as Christopher Isherwood, Stephen Spender, and W. H. Auden, writers who all exiled themselves to Berlin in the 1920s, led to the observation that these authors were circulating and sharing certain literary features across their works.
Focus on English-language literature
Unlike much of the existing research, the project does not just focus on close-knit communities, but on wider connections. Its focus lies on English-language literature – writers from the UK and the US who were pushed out of their home countries and continued their work abroad. It traces links between places such as Capri in Italy, Tangier in Morocco, as well as Paris and Berlin – locations that, between 1900 and 1969, at specific moments offered forms of shelter to queer people under less restrictive legal conditions.
Literary scholar Benjam Robbins examines how and why queer writers found one another in exile and how (in)voluntary migration shaped their stories. A map of queer exile in the 20th century reveals previously overlooked connections that stretched from Tangier in Morocco to Capri in Italy, and on to Paris and Berlin.
Legal reforms and decriminalization
Anti-homosexual legislation across Europe and the US forced many queer writers into exile, leading them to gather temporarily in shifting spaces of relative freedom. As Robbins points out, these conditions were never continuous. In places like Capri and Berlin, they were curtailed with the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s. This makes it crucial to understand the timeframe as shaped by shifting legal conditions.
By the late 1960s, legal reforms marked a turning point, as the gradual decriminalization of homosexuality in the UK and US lessened some of the pressures on queer people. “The time frame is really structured around a legal framework – how anti-homosexual legislation produced exile,” says Robbins. It is within these unstable conditions – between movement, constraint, and temporary shelter – that a distinct literary form begins to emerge.
Literary Tradition and Cosmopolitanism in Queer Exile
The project makes an important new contribution by showing how queer exile shaped what Robbins calls an “overlooked literary tradition,” visible through distinct formal characteristics. Works of queer exile literature are not conventional travel narratives, as the journeys they depict are rarely voluntary. As the researcher suggests, because these writers’ routes through space could not be planned predictably, they moved between locations without a clear destination. In literary terms, this manifests in their writing as sudden spatial shifts, unclear transitions, and blurred representations of cities. “The distinctions between different places are more fluid than you might expect,” Robbins explains and continues, “It reflects the reality of living under legal oppression.”
Equally, rather than following heteronormative trajectories, there is often no clearly defined endpoint in these works – no socially prescribed goal such as marriage, children, or homemaking. “Queer people might not have a final destination in terms of their lives,” the researcher notes, arguing that this also affects the fluid and mobile ways in which characters are presented. “A character who is not able to express their identity in their home environment moves to a different place and is then able to experiment with their identity more freely.”
Figures in queer exile literature are often based on real individuals, reappearing across diverse texts by different writers under various aliases. This circulation shows how well-networked these writers were across these locations. “Networked Narratives” also rethinks the concept of cosmopolitanism. The principal investigator emphasizes that he deliberately speaks of “exiles” rather than “expatriates,” explaining, “Expatriate implies that you are actively choosing to move somewhere else.” Similarly, the term cosmopolitan often suggests freedom and mobility by choice. Through the lens of this project, however, cosmopolitanism emerges not as freedom, but as a result of pressure – linking it to forced movement and marginality. At the same time, many of these writers described themselves as “cosmopolitans,” often using the term as a coded reference to queer identities.
Mapping Networks and Their Relevance Today
These conceptual shifts are reflected not only in close textual analysis, but also in the methods and outputs through which the project makes queer exile connections visible. It combines approaches from digital humanities with literary analysis and has designed interactive network visualizations accessible via the project’s website. In doing so, it draws on actor–network theory (ANT) from sociology, which understands social reality as shaped by networks – more precisely, by different actors within them. Particularly relevant here is ANT’s focus on weak ties as well as strong ones.
Instead of only considering relationships based on close proximity – such as writers living in the same neighborhood – the project highlights important connections between writers across distanced locations through their correspondence or creative exchanges. As Robbins notes, ANT is equally interested in these so-called weaker links. So far, the project has gathered around 5,000 data points and developed nine visualizations, as well as generating significant public engagement. Robbins is also currently finalizing a monograph bringing together case studies across the exile locations examined. A number of articles, book chapters, and conference contributions have already been published.
An important takeaway, however, is that exile is not a phenomenon of the past, but remains an ongoing global reality. “People are still being pushed out of countries because of their sexuality,” Robbins emphasizes, pointing to cities like Berlin, which continue to function as places of refuge for queer individuals from countries such as Syria or Russia. Contemporary literature about queer exile still draws on the queer exile literary tradition, says Robbins. “They’re including features from that archive of literature in their work.” At the same time, the range of identities represented has expanded, making these narratives more diverse and interconnected today. And yet, spaces of shelter remain unstable. There is always the possibility that new legislation can render a place more hostile to queer people once again. Places that offer refuge are not fixed – a point Robbins underscores in closing: “Progress is not final.”
About the researcher
Benjamin Robbins is a senior postdoctoral researcher in American literary and cultural studies who recently completed the “Networked Narratives” project at the University of Innsbruck. He is the author of Faulkner’s Hollywood Novels: Women between Page and Screen (University of Virginia Press, 2024). His research focuses on queer and gender studies, transnational literature and culture, and narrative theory, with publications in journals such as Genre and Amerikastudien/American Studies and in the edited collections Flyover Fictions and Gender Across Media Landscapes. He has been a visiting research fellow at the Harry Ransom Center in Texas and the Huntington Library in California. The project “Networked Narratives: Queer Exile Literature 1900-1969” (2022–2026) receives €329,000 in funding from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).
