The Lesbian Premodern [Paperback]

Key scholars in the field of lesbian and sexuality studies take part in an innovative conversation that offers a radical new methodology for writing lesbian history and geography, drawing new conclusions on the important and often overlooked work being done on female same-sex desire and identity in relation to premodern cultures.Preface: Lesbian Studies Meets the Premodern; K.Lochrie Introduction: The Lesbian Premodern; N.Giffney, M.M.Sauer? & D.Watt PART I: THEORIES AND HISTORIOGRAPHIES 'The Present Future of Lesbian Historiography'; V.Traub ''A Wrangling Parliament': Terminology and Audience in Medieval European Literary Studies and Lesbian Studies'; A.Laskaya 'Lesbian History and Erotic Reading'; L.Farina 'The Queer Time of the Lesbian Premodern'; C.Freccero ''Virgins' and 'Not Women': Dissident Gender Positions'; T.Jankowski PART II: READINGS AND HISTORIES 'Virgin Desires: Reading a Homoerotics of Female Monastic Community'; L.M.C.Weston 'Medieval Barbie Dolls: Femme Fatales in Ascetic Collections'; A.Klosowska 'Naming Love: The God Kama, the Goddess Ganga and the Child of Two Women'; R.Vanita 'Remembering Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge'; J.M.Bennett 'Towards a Philology of the Premodern Lesbian'; H.Puff PART III: ENCOUNTERS WITH THE LESBIAN PREMODERN 'Lesbian Time'; H.Bauer 'A Usable Past?'; L.Faderman 'Sacramentality and the Lesbian Premodern'; E.Freeman 'Invention is the Necessity of Lesbians'; L.Garber 'Lesbian Ghosts'; M.Vicinus Afterword: The Lesbian Premodern Meets the Lesbian Postmodern; R.Wiegman

The editors of The Lesbian Premodern have gathered here the work of some of the most prominent and accomplished scholars of pre- and early modern female sexualities. In the brilliantly conceived and executed latter part of the book they bring provocative scholars of later periods into conversation with this medieval and early modern scholarship. The result is a dynamic interrogation of fundamental concepts, demonstrating vividly how thisl²