BOOK NEWS: Reassessing the meanings, uses, and limitations of lesbian modernism

Interrogating Lesbian Modernism: Histories, Forms, Genres

EDITED BY ELIZABETH ENGLISH, JANA FUNKE, AND SARAH PARKER

Edinburgh UP, 2023

ISBN: 9781474486057

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-interrogating-lesbian-modernism.html

Makiko Minow coined the phrase ‘lesbian modernism’ in 1989. Since then, scholars of lesbian modernism have produced crucial work to critique and expand the modernist canon. At the same time, there has been ongoing critical debate about what constitutes a lesbian modernist text, who counts as a lesbian modernist author, and how lesbian modernism relates to queer and trans modernism. This edited volume presents twelve newly commissioned chapters that reassess and interrogate the meanings, uses and limitations of lesbian modernism by exploring a broad range of authors, genres and histories. Individual chapters investigate what work the concept of ‘lesbian modernism’ has done in the past, how its boundaries have been defined and contested, and what voices have been included and excluded. As a whole, the book demonstrates how the concept of lesbian modernism can be mobilized in new and meaningful ways to continue to inform and enrich modernist studies.

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

Contents

Introduction, Elizabeth English, Jana Funke, and Sarah Parker

Part 1: Interrogating Lesbian/Queer/Trans Modernism

Chapter 1: Loving/Hating/Loving Lesbian Modernism, Jodie Medd

Chapter 2: Lesbian-Trans-Feminist Modernism: Christopher St. John, Trans Masculinity and Celibate Friendship in Hungerheart: The Story of a Soul, Jana Funke

Chapter 3: The Ontology of the Pluri-Singular Body in Natalie Clifford Barney’s The One Who is Legion or A.D.’s After-Life, Katharina Boeckenhoff

Part 2: Genres and Forms

Chapter 4: Imaginative Biography: Margaret Goldsmith, Vita Sackville-West and Lesbian Historical Life Writing, Elizabeth English

Chapter 5: Modernism at the Margins: Mariette Lydis’s Print Portfolio Lesbiennes, Abbey Rees-Hales

Chapter 6: Inverting the Gaze: Radclyffe Hall and Male Sexual Identities, Steven Macnamara

Part 3: Relationality, Networks and Kinship

Chapter 7: Writing Widows of Lesbian Modernism, Hannah Roche

Chapter 8: Lesbianism in/and the Family: Eva Gore-Booth and the Making of Feminist Modernism, Kathryn Holland

Chapter 9: Lesbian Joyce, Katherine Mullin

Part 4: Histories and Temporalities

Chapter 10: Elizabethan Lovemaking: College Romance and Queer Anachronism in Edna St. Vincent Millay’s The Lamp and the Bell, Sarah Parker

Chapter 11: The Lesbian Herstory Archives at Fifty, Robin Hackett

Chapter 12: Hidden in Plain Sight: The Reconstruction of Lesbian Modernist Sexual Histories, Jo Winning

"This impressive essay collection showcases the range and—perhaps more crucially—the continuing relevance of lesbian studies to scholars of literary modernism. Interrogating Lesbian Modernism invites readers to reflect on the past, present, and future of the figure of the ‘lesbian’ and will undoubtedly influence how we engage with modernity itself."　—Laura Doan, author of Disturbing Practices: History, Sexuality, and Women’s Experience of Modern War

Elizabeth English is a senior lecturer in English at Cardiff Metropolitan University

Jana Funke is associate professor of English and sexuality studies at the University of Exeter.

Sarah Parker is a senior lecturer in English at Loughborough University.