Coffee House Perspectives, the official podcast of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, returns just in time for the holidays, this time bringing together four experts to discuss Queer Pirates and the Eighteenth Century.

When it was released in 2022 the TV show Our Flag Means Death became an instant cult classic, garnering universal critical claim and heralded for its LGBTQ+ representation. Build as a ‘historical romantic comedy’ OFMD is set in the early eighteenth century during the ‘Golden Age of Piracy.’

The show followed fairly closely on the heels of Black Sails (2014-2017) and, whilst very much not a comedy, similarly explored the sexuality of pirates. Indeed, the idea of ‘queering pirates’ has become increasingly mainstream.

But why has this happened? What was the historical reality of “queer pirates”? What is about pirates in both the history of and fiction produced by the eighteenth century that has seemingly made them such a fertile site for queer representation? And for scholars of the eighteenth century, how do we balance the desire for LGBTQ+ representation in history with faithfulness to the historical record?

These are just some of the questions that Dr Adam J Smith (BSECS Criticks Chief Editor and Associate Professor at York St John University, UK) will be presenting to a panel of experts in this episode of Coffee House Perspectives.

Your experts this time are:

• Professor Manushag Powell (Arizona State University, USA)

• Dr Victorian Barnett-Woods (Washington College, USA)

• Taylin Nelson (Rice University, USA)

• Gráinne O’Hare (Newcastle University, UK)

The episode was edited by Charlotte Crawshaw (Northumbria University, UK).