A01=Scott Herring
american studies
Author_Scott Herring
bisexuality
blackness
canon
capitalism
carl van vechten
Category=DSBH
charity
class
compton
crime
deviance
djuna barnes
down low
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
gay
gender
harlem
history
homosexuality
hullhouse
identity
jane addams
lesbian
lgbt
lgbtq
lgbtqia
literature
masculinity
nonfiction
philanthropy
poverty
queer
race
sexuality
signs
slumming
slums
subculture
tramps
underworld
willa cather
Product details
- ISBN 9780226327907
- Weight: 510g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 30 Dec 2007
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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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.
Scott Herring is assistant professor of English at Indiana University.
