Sapphic Modernities: Sexuality, Women and National Culture

by Laura L. Doan (Editor), Jane Garrity (Editor)

Sapphic Modernities marks the first attempt to examine the representation of the lesbian in modernity from the multiple perspectives of literary, visual, and cultural studies, seeking collectively to answer: What range of "sapphisms" circulated during the interwar period, and what forms of cultural production enabled the lesbian's emergence and self-definition? This exciting collection's aim is to show how the sapphic figure, in her multiple and contradictory guises, refigures the relation between public and private space, interrogates the category of nationality, and redefines what it means to be a modern citizen in the early decades of the twentieth century.

Genres: Nonfiction, Lesbian

271 pages, Hardcover

First published June 10, 2006

About the author

Laura Doan is professor of cultural history and sexuality studies at the University of Manchester. She is the author of Fashioning Sapphism: The Origins of a Modern English Lesbian Culture and editor of Sexology in Culture: Labeling Bodies and Desires, among other books.