Authors:
- Blends historiography with contemporary fiction studies to interrogate the elusive domain of lesbian history
- Provides a comprehensive look at a major subsection of lesbian fiction
- Makes use of feminist and queer theories, literature and genre fiction, while retaining readability
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Contemporary Women’s Writing (PSCWW)
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About this book
Novel Approaches to Lesbian History tells a tale about history and community in our allegedly post-identity era, examining contemporary novels that depict lesbian characters in recognizable historical situations. These imaginative stories provide a politically vital, speculative past in the face of a sketchy, problematic archive. Among the memorable characters in some 200 novels are pirates, cowgirls, and famous artists, ghosts and time travellers, immigrants and lovers. The best lesbian historical novels are conscientious and buoyant as they engage critical historiographical questions, but Novel Approaches also discusses the class and race biases that weigh on the genre. Some lesbian historical novels are based on archival evidence, others on conjecture or fantasy, but all convey the true fact that identity is elusive without a past, without which its future is nearly impossible.
Reviews
--Lillian Faderman, author of Surpassing the Love of Men, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, and To Believe in Women
“It's rare to call a non-fiction book about literature a page-turner, but that's what Linda Garber has given us. She eloquently captures the urgent need we have to find our woman-loving selves in the past, in a crisp lesbian literary history full of pride, passion, and charm. At the same time, she calls to account the places where the work has been inauthentic. You'll finish Garber's book clutching a very long fiction reading list!”--Jewelle Gomez, author of The Gilda Stories
“A study of the fascinating genre of lesbian historical fiction is long overdue, and Garber’s is insightful and highly readable.”--Emma Donohue, author of Room, The Pull of the Stars, Life Mask, and The Sealed Letter
Authors and Affiliations
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Women’s & Gender Studies Department, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, USA
Linda Garber
About the author
Linda Garber is the author of Identity Poetics: Race, Class, and the Lesbian-Feminist Roots of Queer Theory and Lesbian Sources: A Bibliography of Periodical Articles, and the editor of Tilting the Tower: Lesbians / Teaching / Queer Subjects. She is Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Santa Clara University, USA.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Novel Approaches to Lesbian History
Authors: Linda Garber
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Contemporary Women’s Writing
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85417-1
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-85416-4Published: 14 December 2021
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-15249-8Published: 16 November 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-85417-1Published: 01 January 2022
Series ISSN: 2523-8140
Series E-ISSN: 2523-8159
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: X, 188
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Twentieth-Century Literature, Queer Studies, History, general