Examining the Queer Readings of Paradise Lost in Contemporary Scholarship
Author: Martin Munyao Muinde
Email: Ephantusmartin@gmail.com
Date: October 2025
Introduction: Paradise Lost and the Evolution of Queer Literary Criticism
John Milton’s seventeenth-century epic poem Paradise Lost has long occupied a central position in the English literary canon, traditionally examined through theological, political, and feminist lenses. However, contemporary scholarship has witnessed a remarkable transformation in Milton studies through the application of queer theory and anti-heteronormative interpretive frameworks. This research paper examines how modern scholars utilize queer readings to uncover previously marginalized aspects of gender, sexuality, and desire within Milton’s magnum opus, revealing the epic’s radical potential to challenge heteronormative assumptions about bodies, reproduction, and erotic relationships.
The emergence of queer Milton scholarship represents what some critics have termed a “belated” but necessary intervention in early modern literary studies. As Murphy notes in the landmark 2018 collection Queer Milton, edited by David L. Orvis, this scholarly turn investigates “the missing middle of Milton studies” by building upon previous feminist and proto-queer work while pushing these critical methodologies in new directions (Orvis, 2018). The application of queer theory to Paradise Lost has proven particularly fruitful, as the poem itself contains numerous moments that resist simple categorization and invite interpretation through frameworks emphasizing fluidity, ambiguity, and the transgression of binary systems.
Understanding queer readings of Paradise Lost requires recognizing that “queer” in academic discourse extends beyond contemporary identity categories to encompass, as contemporary scholars define it, anything “differing in some way from what is usual or normal” (Merriam-Webster). This broader conceptualization allows scholars to examine how Milton’s epic engages with non-normative sexualities, genders, and forms of desire that challenge the rigid binaries often assumed to govern seventeenth-century literature. The following analysis explores multiple dimensions of queer scholarship on Paradise Lost, including representations of angelic sexuality, Satan’s gender fluidity, queer reproduction and birth narratives, Eve’s homoerotic desire, and the poem’s complex relationship with heteronormativity.
Angelic Sexuality and Non-Binary Eroticism in Paradise Lost
One of the most compelling sites for queer readings of Paradise Lost emerges in Milton’s depiction of angelic sexuality, which fundamentally disrupts conventional understandings of gendered embodiment and erotic union. In Book Eight of the epic, the angel Raphael describes to Adam a form of sexual intimacy that transcends human corporeal limitations and heterosexual reproduction. Milton writes that angels, when they embrace, achieve “total” union because their refined spiritual substance allows complete interpenetration without the constraints of physical bodies bound by “joynt or limb” (Milton, Book 5, lines 423-426). This description has become central to contemporary queer readings of the text.
Stephen Guy-Bray, in his essay “‘Fellowships of Joy’: Angelic Union in Paradise Lost” published in the 2018 Queer Milton collection, argues that Milton presents angelic union as “a non-reproductive and ultimately ungendered sexuality that we can only call queer” (Guy-Bray, 2018, p. 140). This assertion highlights how Milton’s angelology creates a model of sexuality divorced from procreation, gender difference, and the hierarchical structures that characterize fallen human sexuality. The angels’ ability to experience pleasure without reproductive consequences challenges the teleological understanding of sex that dominated Christian theology in Milton’s era and continues to influence contemporary heteronormative ideologies.
Moreover, Milton explicitly states that angels “when they please / Can either Sex assume, or both” (Book 1, lines 423-424), indicating a radical gender fluidity that contemporary scholars align with transgender and non-binary identities. Kolpien observes that Milton dedicates extensive textual space to describing these “queer Pagan spirits,” noting the “sumptuous” quality of spending many lines on beings who can shift between or embody multiple genders simultaneously (Kolpien, 2015). This textual attention suggests Milton’s fascination with beings who exist outside binary gender categories, offering what some scholars term a vision of “etherealised sexuality that transcends the gender binaries of male and female” (andyhuangqueerwriting, 2014).
The implications of angelic sexuality extend beyond mere description to challenge fundamental assumptions about ideal relationships. As Luxon argues in “Queering as Critical Practice in Reading Paradise Lost,” the poem establishes what he terms “the (il)logic of the supplement,” whereby the Genesis creation account becomes supplementary to pre-existing beings and places in Milton’s cosmic order (Luxon, 2018). This supplementary logic introduces contradictions and paradoxes that encourage queer interpretation, particularly when considering that prelapsarian Adam and Eve’s sexuality is explicitly described as an imitation of the angels’ perfect union. If humanity’s ideal sexuality models itself on angelic eroticism, then heterosexual reproduction becomes not the original or natural state but rather a diminished version of a more fluid, non-gendered erotic possibility.
Satan as Queer Icon: Gender Fluidity and Transgressive Embodiment
Satan emerges as perhaps the most queerly coded figure in Paradise Lost, exhibiting forms of gender fluidity, performative sexuality, and transgressive embodiment that have captivated contemporary queer scholars. From his first appearance, Satan’s characterization resists stable categorization, presenting what one recent blogger termed “something undeniably queer about Satan” rooted in his status as fallen, different, and definitionally aberrant from normative angelic existence (Jake’s Takes, 2025).
Satan’s queerness manifests most obviously through his repeated bodily transformations throughout the epic. As he approaches Eden to tempt Eve, Satan adopts multiple forms: he disguises himself as a cherub, becomes a cormorant perched on the Tree of Life, transforms into a toad whispering in Eve’s ear, and finally assumes the shape of the serpent (Milton, Books 3-9). These metamorphoses demonstrate what scholars term “performative gender expression,” with Satan shifting between masculine and feminine-coded forms to achieve his deceptive purposes. Particularly significant is Satan’s serpent form, which one scholar describes as “an obvious phallic image meant to tempt Eve” that becomes “erect” upon perceiving her presence, conflating sexual arousal with temptation (Emergence Journal, 2018).
Beyond physical transformation, Satan’s rhetorical style and affective presentation code him as queer through seventeenth-century and contemporary frameworks alike. His dramatic speeches, his aesthetic sensibility evident in the elaborate construction of Pandemonium, and his magnetic charisma despite having ruined his followers’ immortal lives all contribute to his queer characterization. John Rogers, in his Yale lectures on Milton, termed Satan’s extensive cataloging of pagan deities and their gender possibilities “gratuitous,” suggesting a textual excess that luxuriates in describing figures who trouble gender categories (Jake’s Takes, 2025).
Satan’s relationship with Sin provides another crucial site for queer readings. Sin’s birth from Satan’s head—a form of masculine parthenogenesis—queers traditional reproduction by eliminating female participation in generation. Kolpien argues that this “specifically queer and masculine nature of reproduction” contrasts dramatically with the punishment Sin later receives through heterosexual reproduction and sexual violence (Kolpien, 2015). The juxtaposition suggests that queer reproduction is associated with divinity and prelapsarian existence, while heterosexual reproduction becomes a mark of fallenness and punishment.
Furthermore, Satan’s complex relationship with his own embodiment reveals what contemporary scholars term gender dysphoria or body alienation. Throughout the epic, Satan mourns the loss of his original angelic form, lamenting his “transcendent brightness” now diminished. Yet this mourning coexists with his adoption of forms coded as feminine or sexually ambiguous, particularly when he appears as a “dream” figure with “dewy locks” to Eve (Book 5, lines 55-57). This oscillation between masculine assertion and feminine embodiment creates what one scholar describes as Satan’s existence “between the physical and the imagined,” occupying a liminal space that resists stable gender categorization (Emergence Journal, 2018).
Queer Reproduction and the Birth of Eve
Milton’s treatment of reproduction in Paradise Lost offers fertile ground for queer interpretation, particularly in his depictions of non-heterosexual generation. The births of both Sin and Eve follow what scholars term “queer” patterns that bypass conventional heterosexual reproduction, instead presenting masculine forms of generation that challenge patriarchal assumptions about women’s necessary role in procreation.
Eve’s creation from Adam’s rib represents perhaps the most analyzed moment in queer Milton scholarship. Rather than emerging through heterosexual union, Eve appears through what some scholars describe as a surgical procedure performed by God on Adam’s sleeping body. This act of divine surgery transforms Adam into a kind of mother figure, generating life from his own flesh without female participation. As one scholar notes, “both Adam and God can be considered mothers in a queer sense prior to Eve’s creation” (Academia.edu, 2018). This observation fundamentally disrupts the equation of motherhood with female bodies, suggesting instead that generation need not follow heterosexual patterns even within Milton’s ostensibly Christian framework.
The queer implications of Eve’s birth extend to questions of same-sex desire and homoeroticism. Immediately upon awakening, Eve encounters her reflection in a pool and becomes captivated by what she perceives as another being. Multiple scholars have noted the explicitly homoerotic dimensions of this scene, with Kolpien arguing that Eve’s “narcissistic scene at the lake after her birth reveals her queer sexual desire for her feminine reflection” (Kolpien, 2015). Rather than dismissing this moment as simple vanity, queer readings emphasize Eve’s genuine attraction to feminine beauty and her reluctance to leave this image when called to Adam. Her initial flight from Adam back toward the pool suggests, in these readings, a preference for same-sex erotic attachment over the heterosexual union God designs for her.
Moreover, the scene establishes what scholars term a “queer origin” for human sexuality, wherein same-sex desire precedes and must be forcibly redirected toward heterosexual coupling. As one analysis observes, Eve “turns to flee back to her own delectable likeness” upon first seeing Adam’s “sexual difference,” suggesting that gender difference initially repels rather than attracts her (Academia.edu, 2018). Only through divine and masculine intervention—both God’s voice and Adam’s rhetoric—does Eve redirect her desire toward heterosexual union. This narrative sequence implies that heterosexuality requires social construction and enforcement rather than emerging naturally from human nature.
The textual attention Milton devotes to these non-normative births contrasts sharply with his relative silence about prelapsarian heterosexual reproduction. As Karma deGruy notes in her influential essay “Desiring Angels: The Angelic Body in Paradise Lost,” “Edenic eroticism is consistently invisible, ambiguous, or abbreviated” despite critical consensus assuming Adam and Eve’s sexual intimacy (deGruy, 2012). This textual reticence about heterosexual sex while elaborating queer reproduction suggests, some scholars argue, Milton’s greater comfort with or interest in non-normative generation.
Heteronormativity as Postlapsarian Punishment
A particularly provocative strain in contemporary queer Milton scholarship argues that heterosexual reproduction functions in Paradise Lost not as the ideal human condition but rather as punishment for the Fall. This reading fundamentally inverts traditional interpretations that locate heterosexual marriage at the center of Milton’s vision for human flourishing.
The transformation of sexuality post-Fall provides crucial evidence for this interpretation. Before eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve’s sexual relationship remains ambiguous and, as noted above, is described as imitating angelic union—a non-reproductive, non-gendered form of eroticism. After the Fall, however, their sexuality transforms dramatically. Milton writes that “they… / In Lust…burn” (Book 9, lines 1013-1015), suggesting that postlapsarian sexuality involves a degraded form of desire qualitatively different from their prelapsarian intimacy. More significantly, God’s punishment for Eve explicitly centers on reproductive sexuality: “in sorrow thou shalt bring forth Children” (Book 10, line 195). This curse makes heterosexual reproduction—specifically the pain associated with childbirth—a marker of fallenness rather than divine blessing.
Several scholars have developed sophisticated readings of how Milton positions heterosexual reproduction as fallen. In a paper titled “The Queer in Paradise Lost: Heterosexual Reproduction as Postlapsarian Necessity,” one analyst argues that “examples of queer intercourse and reproduction within the poem are products of divinity, and heterosexual reproduction is the necessary judgment for Adam and Eve’s sin” (Academia.edu, 2018). This formulation inverts the traditional Christian valorization of procreative sexuality, suggesting instead that non-reproductive, queer forms of intimacy represent the prelapsarian ideal.
Furthermore, Milton’s treatment of gender hierarchy undergoes transformation at the Fall. Prelapsarian Adam and Eve, while not entirely equal, maintain a relationship scholars describe as relatively egalitarian, with Eve demonstrating intellectual independence and initiative. Postlapsarian, however, God explicitly establishes patriarchal domination: “he over thee shall rule” (Book 10, line 196). This establishment of male dominance coincides with the inauguration of reproductive heterosexuality, suggesting that both patriarchy and obligatory heterosexuality emerge as punishments rather than natural or divinely ordained arrangements.
The implications of reading heteronormativity as punishment extend to understanding Milton’s broader theological and political commitments. As scholars note, Milton wrote during the English Civil War and Commonwealth period, when traditional hierarchies faced unprecedented challenge. His presentation of prelapsarian equality and queer possibilities, followed by postlapsarian heteronormative patriarchy, might allegorically represent political commentary on how oppressive systems emerge from fallen conditions rather than divine design.
Feminist and Queer Convergences: Eve’s Objectification and Agency
Contemporary queer readings of Paradise Lost frequently intersect with feminist criticism, particularly in analyzing Eve’s characterization and the poem’s treatment of gender inequality. While traditional feminist criticism has often condemned Milton as misogynistic, newer queer-feminist approaches offer more nuanced readings that identify moments of resistance and agency within patriarchal structures.
Eve’s objectification within the poem provides a clear target for feminist critique. Scholars employing Martha Nussbaum’s framework for analyzing objectification demonstrate how Eve experiences “triple objectification at the hands of God, Adam and Satan, in an environment of widespread and entrenched sexual inequality” (English Studies, 2018). God creates Eve explicitly for Adam’s benefit, Adam claims ownership over her body and decisions, and Satan targets her as an instrument for achieving revenge against God. This systematic objectification reduces Eve to an object of exchange among masculine powers rather than recognizing her as an autonomous subject.
However, queer-feminist readings complicate this picture by identifying moments where Eve exercises agency and desires autonomy, even within oppressive structures. Eve’s insistence on working separately from Adam in Book Nine, for instance, demonstrates her claim to independence and rational decision-making capacity. As one scholar argues, “Eve craves not only independence but also respect from Adam and God,” suggesting her fall results partly from justified dissatisfaction with her subordinate position (GradesFixer, 2021). From this perspective, Eve’s transgression becomes not mere disobedience but rather an attempt to escape the limited subjectivity offered to her in Eden.
The narcissism scene discussed earlier gains additional complexity through queer-feminist analysis. Rather than simply coding Eve as vain or indicating innate female weakness, her attraction to her reflection might represent, as Kolpien argues, a form of self-love and autonomy that patriarchal structures cannot tolerate (Kolpien, 2015). The masculine powers in the poem—God and Adam—must intervene to redirect Eve’s desire away from herself and toward heterosexual union, suggesting that female autonomy and same-sex desire pose threats to patriarchal reproduction and male dominance.
Queer-feminist scholars also examine how the poem sexualizes female bodies while leaving male sexuality relatively unmarked. Both Sin and Eve receive elaborate physical descriptions that emphasize their sexual attractiveness, with Sin’s monstrous lower body particularly highlighting the association of female sexuality with danger and corruption. This sexualization, scholars argue, serves to contain female power by reducing women to sexual objects, yet it also inadvertently reveals the excessive attention masculinity directs toward controlling female bodies and desires.
Temporal Dimensions: Queer Futurity and Utopianism in Paradise Lost
Recent queer theory has devoted considerable attention to questions of temporality, futurity, and utopianism, and these frameworks have proven productive for reading Paradise Lost. Scholars drawing on theorists like José Esteban Muñoz and Lee Edelman examine how Milton’s epic engages with queer possibilities for reimagining time, reproduction, and social organization.
The temporal structure of Paradise Lost itself invites queer reading through what scholars term “the (il)logic of the supplement.” Milton presents prelapsarian time as containing possibilities—angelic sexuality, gender fluidity, non-reproductive eroticism—that become foreclosed in postlapsarian history. Yet by depicting these queer possibilities as prelapsarian, Milton simultaneously positions them as originary and ideal, suggesting a utopian vision that contradicts the heteronormative teleology often attributed to Christian theology.
Heaven, in particular, functions as what scholars term a “queer utopia” in Milton’s epic. As one analyst observes, “Milton’s ideal, ‘Heaven’, is a reflection of his ideal of perfect beings, angels, and in Milton’s conception of this perfect society, there exists nothing like human, genital sexuality” (andyhuangqueerwriting, 2014). Instead, Heaven features “an etherealised sexuality that transcends the gender binaries of male and female, that rejects all sense of corporeal sexuality in favour of total orgasm and total union in spiritual embrace.” This vision of ideal sexuality divorced from reproduction, gender difference, and bodily limitation presents what queer theorists would recognize as a challenge to reproductive futurity—the ideology that positions childbearing and heterosexual family structures as the only legitimate form of social continuity.
The poem’s engagement with reproduction particularly illuminates its queer temporal dimensions. While postlapsarian humanity must reproduce sexually to continue the species, prelapsarian existence features multiple forms of generation that bypass heterosexual coupling. Angels generate through divine creation, Sin births from Satan’s head, Eve emerges from Adam’s rib—all forms of reproduction that resist heteronormative patterns. By positioning these queer reproductive modes as prelapsarian, Milton creates what scholars term a “queer genealogy” that precedes and exceeds heterosexual reproduction.
Moreover, contemporary adaptations and cultural responses to Paradise Lost demonstrate the poem’s ongoing capacity to generate queer futurity. Recent scholarship examines how works ranging from Netflix’s Lucifer and Sandman to Lil Nas X’s “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” music video draw on Milton’s Satan as an embodiment of queer identification and resistance to heteronormative authority (Intellect, 2024). These contemporary adaptations suggest that Milton’s epic continues to provide resources for imagining queer possibilities and challenging normative structures.
Methodological Considerations: Historicism and Presentism in Queer Milton Studies
The emergence of queer readings of Paradise Lost has raised important methodological questions about the relationship between historical context and contemporary interpretive frameworks. Scholars debate whether applying twenty-first-century concepts like “queer” to seventeenth-century texts constitutes anachronism or whether such readings illuminate genuine textual features previously obscured by heteronormative assumptions.
Historicist scholars emphasize the importance of understanding Milton’s cultural context, noting that seventeenth-century England possessed different categories for understanding sexuality, gender, and embodiment than contemporary Western cultures. As one scholar notes, even if Michel Foucault correctly argues that “homosexuality did not exist as a conceptual category of personhood” in Milton’s era, early modern culture nonetheless recognized “clearly defined theological categories of ‘sins of the flesh'” including sodomy, fornication, and bestiality (ResearchGate, 2018). These categories, while not identical to modern sexual identities, nonetheless created frameworks for understanding non-normative desires and practices.
However, other scholars argue that queer theory’s value lies precisely in its capacity to denaturalize categories we take as stable and reveal how texts trouble binary systems. Will Stockton, in his afterword to the 2018 Queer Milton collection, suggests that “reading queerly is not simply a matter of reading work written by queer people” but rather “attunes us to the queerness of even the most straightforward text” (Stockton, 2018). From this perspective, applying queer frameworks to Milton does not impose foreign concepts but rather reveals aspects of the text that heteronormative reading practices have systematically overlooked or dismissed.
The 2018 publication of Queer Milton, the first book-length study dedicated to anti-heteronormative approaches to Milton’s work, represents a watershed moment in these methodological debates. The collection, edited by David L. Orvis, organizes essays into sections on “Eroticism and Form” and “Temporality and Affect,” demonstrating diverse approaches to queering Milton while maintaining scholarly rigor (Orvis, 2018). Contributors employ both historicist methods that ground interpretation in early modern contexts and theoretical approaches that leverage contemporary queer frameworks to generate new readings.
The collection also acknowledges what Murphy terms the “belatedness” of queer Milton studies, noting that Shakespeare has long dominated queer approaches to early modern literature (Murphy, 2018). This belatedness, rather than indicating irrelevance, creates opportunities for fresh intervention and for leveraging insights from more established queer Renaissance scholarship. The delayed arrival of sustained queer attention to Milton allows contemporary scholars to draw on sophisticated theoretical frameworks and avoid some pitfalls that characterized earlier queer criticism.
Contemporary Cultural Impact: Paradise Lost in Queer Popular Culture
The influence of queer readings of Paradise Lost extends beyond academic scholarship into contemporary popular culture, where Milton’s epic continues to inspire adaptations that foreground queer themes and interpretations. This cultural phenomenon demonstrates both the ongoing relevance of Milton’s work and the ways queer reading practices circulate beyond university settings.
Recent popular adaptations frequently center on Satan as a figure of queer identification and rebellion against normative authority. The 2021 music video for Lil Nas X’s “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” explicitly draws on Paradise Lost imagery, depicting the artist’s descent from heaven to hell where he embraces Satan in a sexually charged encounter. Scholars examining this adaptation argue it exemplifies how “a narrative of queer desire develops” through engagement with Milton’s epic, with Satan representing not evil but rather liberation from oppressive religious and sexual norms (Intellect, 2024).
Television adaptations also demonstrate Paradise Lost‘s queer cultural currency. Netflix’s Lucifer series presents the fallen angel as a bisexual nightclub owner in contemporary Los Angeles, emphasizing his sexual fluidity and complicated relationship with divine authority. Similarly, Netflix’s Sandman adaptation, based on Neil Gaiman’s graphic novels that themselves engage deeply with Milton, features gender-fluid angels and challenges heteronormative assumptions about celestial beings. Scholars analyzing these works argue they represent a continuation of queer readings that recognize Satan and other fallen angels as figures who “embody queer identification” through their transgression of divine order (Spencer & Barnett, 2024).
Intriguingly, some contemporary adaptations shift queer identification from Satan to Christ, suggesting the breadth of possibilities Milton’s epic enables. An essay examining the 2013 animated film My Little Pony: Equestria Girls argues that it “uses Paradise Lost as queer source material for a story about forgiveness and love,” centering not on rebellion but on acceptance and community building (Intellect, 2024). This adaptation demonstrates how different aspects of Milton’s theological framework can support varying queer interpretations.
The circulation of these popular adaptations creates feedback loops with academic scholarship, as critics analyze how contemporary culture engages with Milton while these cultural products inspire new scholarly approaches. This dynamic relationship between academic queer theory and popular queer culture ensures that Paradise Lost remains a living text continually reinterpreted for contemporary concerns about sexuality, gender, authority, and liberation.
Conclusion: The Continuing Relevance of Queer Milton Studies
The emergence of sustained queer readings of Paradise Lost in contemporary scholarship represents a significant development in both Milton studies and queer literary criticism more broadly. By applying anti-heteronormative frameworks to Milton’s epic, scholars have revealed previously marginalized aspects of the poem related to gender fluidity, non-normative desire, and alternatives to reproductive heterosexuality. These readings demonstrate that Paradise Lost, despite emerging from seventeenth-century England, contains remarkable resources for contemporary queer thought.
The major contributions of queer Milton scholarship include: recognizing angelic sexuality as a model of non-gendered, non-reproductive eroticism that challenges heteronormative assumptions; identifying Satan’s transformative embodiments as expressions of gender fluidity and queer performativity; analyzing Eve’s creation and narcissism scene as moments of queer desire and alternative possibilities; arguing that heterosexual reproduction functions as postlapsarian punishment rather than prelapsarian ideal; and demonstrating how Milton’s temporal structures enable utopian visions of queer futurity.
These scholarly interventions matter not merely for understanding Milton but for broader questions about how we read canonical literature and whose experiences canonical texts can illuminate. As scholars have noted, queer approaches “attuned us to the queerness of even the most straightforward text,” revealing how heteronormative reading practices have systematically obscured non-normative possibilities (Stockton, 2018). By queering Milton, contemporary scholars challenge the assumption that early modern literature inevitably reinforces traditional gender and sexual hierarchies, demonstrating instead how these texts can provide resources for imagining alternative social and erotic arrangements.
The future of queer Milton studies appears promising, with the 2018 publication of Queer Milton establishing a foundation for ongoing work. Future scholarship might productively explore connections between Milton’s political radicalism and his representations of gender and sexuality, examine how his divorce tracts intersect with queer readings of his poetry, or analyze how disability studies frameworks might illuminate his treatment of bodies and embodiment. Additionally, scholars might further develop comparative approaches that examine Milton alongside other early modern writers through queer frameworks, or that trace how queer readings of Milton influence contemporary literary production.
Ultimately, queer readings of Paradise Lost demonstrate that canonical texts remain open to new interpretations that illuminate aspects previously overlooked or dismissed. By centering questions of desire, gender, embodiment, and normativity, queer Milton scholarship enriches our understanding of both the epic’s textual complexities and its ongoing cultural relevance. As contemporary culture continues to grapple with questions about gender identity, sexual freedom, and the construction of normative systems, Milton’s seventeenth-century epic offers surprising resources for imagination and critique. The queer possibilities embedded in Paradise Lost—from angelic fluidity to Satanic transformation to Eve’s resistant desires—suggest that literature’s capacity to envision alternatives to heteronormative structures extends across centuries, providing both scholarly insight and cultural inspiration for those seeking to imagine more capacious visions of human possibility.
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