Introduction: Our Flag Means Death and the Queer Eighteenth Century

T his collection of essays is based on the ASECS 2024 roundtable titled “Our Flag Means Gay: Our Flag Means Death and Intersectional Directions in Eighteenth-Century Adaptations.” The roundtable came about queerly, if you will: we combined one of our calls for papers on piracy and another on Our Flag Means Death ( OFMD ), the wildly popular HBO Max show that ran for two seasons from 2022 to 2023. OFMD reimagines the early eighteenth century and comically chronicles the adventures of Stede Bonnet, the historical Gentleman Pirate of Barbados, as he leaves his landed gentry life to captain The Revenge , falling in love with Edward “Blackbeard” Teach along the way. The pair end up co-captaining a queer and ethnically diverse pirate crew, establishing the ship as a sexually liberated world against a backdrop of violence and colonialism.