The Gentrified City of God: Queer & Medieval New York, from 9/11 to COVID-19

Throughout New York, gentrification is destroying churches and sex clubs, and turning the city into a spiritual and sexual wasteland. Everyone seems to be suffering from what’s popularly called an “attachment disorder,” but which is actually a crisis of massive disenchantment.

In The Gentrified City of God, A.W. Strouse— a scholar of the Middle Ages and a promiscuous gay Catholic—takes Saint Augustine as a guide, questing through gentrified space in a desperate search for salvation. Or at least some cheap thrills.

In this sequel to My Gay Middle Ages(opens in new tab), Strouse develops a queer-medievalist theology of gentrification, arguing that the contemporary city has become a “sex desert.” Strouse shows how white Christian nationalism is turning urban space into a puritanical discipline of moralistic detachment.

But not all is lost. Mixing first-person confession with cultural criticism, Strouse tours through gay bathhouses, Brooklyn ghettos, demolished Churches, and corporatized universities—exploring how sex and spirituality intersect, in art and architecture, poetry and public policy, and hoping to uncover the secret redemption that might still lie in the heart of the gentrified city.