1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910816734403321

Autore

Herring Scott <1976->

Titolo

Queering the underworld : slumming, literature, and the undoing of lesbian and gay history / / Scott Herring

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago, : University of Chicago Press, 2007

ISBN

9786612239632

1-282-23963-5

0-226-32792-2

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (296 p.)

Disciplina

810.9/920664

Soggetti

American literature - 20th century - History and criticism

Gay culture in literature

Slums in literature

City and town life in literature

Homosexuality in literature

Lesbianism in literature

Homosexuality - United States - History

Lesbianism - United States - History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [237]-263) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Queer Slumming -- Chapter One. Terra Incognita: Jane Addams, Philanthropic Slumming, and the Elusive Identity of Hull-House -- Chapter Two. Willa Cather's Experiment in Luxury -- Chapter Three. "Slightly Known Territory": Renaissance Admixture and the So-Called Van Vechten School -- Chapter Four. Antisapphic Modernism -- Epilogue: Secrets of the African-American Bisexual Man; or, Double Lives on the Down Low -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

At the start of the twentieth century, tales of "how the other half lives" experienced a surge in popularity. People looking to go slumming without leaving home turned to these narratives for spectacular revelations of the underworld and sordid details about the deviants who populated it. In this major rethinking of American literature and



culture, Scott Herring explores how a key group of authors manipulated this genre to paradoxically evade the confines of sexual identification. Queering the Underworld examines a range of writers, from Jane Addams and Willa Cather to Carl Van Vechten and Djuna Barnes, revealing how they fulfilled the conventions of slumming literature but undermined its goals, and in the process, queered the genre itself. Their work frustrated the reader's desire for sexual knowledge, restored the inscrutability of sexual identity, and cast doubt on the value of a homosexual subculture made visible and therefore subject to official control. Herring is persuasive and polemical in connecting these writers to ongoing debates about lesbian and gay history and politics, and Queering the Underworld will be widely read by students and scholars of literature, history, and sexuality.