Introduction

This collection is a result of fruitful discussions and presentations at a symposium called ‘Quiet Revolution? Alternative Sexualities in Europe and the Post-Soviet Region’ held in autumn 2019 at Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Culture. ¹ By bringing together scholars from a variety of disciplines and countries on both sides of the Atlantic, this timely collection is queering the discursive representations of sexualities in Russian media and culture. Queering in this case is understood as questioning the assumptions related to sexualities and normativity. Queering dismisses a binary construction of gender, advocates fluid, multiple identities and disrupts the norm(ativity). This volume treats queering as an act, process or approach. In doing so, it goes beyond the focus on identities and labelling, instead prioritising the (process of) interrogating normativity and questioning the dominant discourses about sexuality in Russia.