The Cambridge Companion to American Gay and Lesbian Literature

This Companion examines the connections between LGBTQ populations and American literature from the late eighteenth to twenty-first centuries.

Scott Herring (Edited by)

9781107646186, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 May 2015

278 pages
22.6 x 14.7 x 1.8 cm, 0.36 kg

This Companion examines the connections between LGBTQ populations and American literature from the late eighteenth to twenty-first centuries. It surveys primary and secondary writings under the evolving category of gay and lesbian authorship, and incorporates current thinking in US-based LGBTQ studies as well as critical practices within the field of American literary studies. This Companion also addresses the ways in which queerness pervades persons, texts, bodies, and reading, while paying attention to the transnational component of such literatures. In so doing, it details the chief genres, conventional historical backgrounds, and influential interpretive practices that support the analysis of LGBTQ literatures in the United States.

1. Queer novelties Michael Cobb
2. Queer theater and performance Sean Metzger
3. Queer poetry, between 'as is' and 'as if' Eric Keenaghan
4. Writing queer lives: autobiography and memoir Julie Avril Minich
5. Queer cinema, queer writing, queer criticism Lucas Hilderbrand
6. Nineteenth-century queer literature Travis Foster
7. Literary and sexual experimentalism in the interwar years Daniela Caselli
8. The Cold War closet Michael P. Bibler
9. The time of AIDS and the rise of 'post-gay' Guy Davidson
10. Gender and sexuality L. H. Stallings
11. Intersections of race, gender, and sexuality: queer of color critique Kyla Wazana Tompkins
12. Psychoanalytic literary criticism of gay and lesbian American literature Judith Roof
13. Post-structuralism: originators and heirs Melissa Jane Hardie
14. Transnational queer imaginaries, intimacies, insurgencies Martin Joseph Ponce.

Subject Areas: Gay & Lesbian studies [JFSK], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literary theory [DSA]