Sapphic Slashers

Fülszöveg

Lesbian gay studies/American studies/U.S. history
On a winter day in 1892, in the broad daylight of downtown Memphis.Tennessee, a middle-class woman named Alice Mitchell slashed the throat of her lover, Freda Ward, killing her instantly Local, national,, and international newspapers, medical and scientific publications, and popular fiction writers all clamored to cover the ensuing "girl lovers" murder trial. Lisa Duggan locates in this sensationalized event the emergence of the lesbian in U.S. mass culture and shows how newly "modern" notions of normality and morality that arose from such cases still haunt and distort lesbian and gay politics to the present day.
"A book to die for! Theoretically sophisticated, yet written with clarity and elegance, Sapphic Slashers opens whole new worlds of understanding about sexuality, gender norms, racial injustice, violence, and the complex ways they are connected. Duggan's is an amazing intellect."—John D'Emilio, coauthor of Intimate... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Lesbian gay studies/American studies/U.S. history
On a winter day in 1892, in the broad daylight of downtown Memphis.Tennessee, a middle-class woman named Alice Mitchell slashed the throat of her lover, Freda Ward, killing her instantly Local, national,, and international newspapers, medical and scientific publications, and popular fiction writers all clamored to cover the ensuing "girl lovers" murder trial. Lisa Duggan locates in this sensationalized event the emergence of the lesbian in U.S. mass culture and shows how newly "modern" notions of normality and morality that arose from such cases still haunt and distort lesbian and gay politics to the present day.
"A book to die for! Theoretically sophisticated, yet written with clarity and elegance, Sapphic Slashers opens whole new worlds of understanding about sexuality, gender norms, racial injustice, violence, and the complex ways they are connected. Duggan's is an amazing intellect."—John D'Emilio, coauthor of Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America
"Duggan seamlessly combines cultural theory with analyses of material conditions and
demonstrates a breathtaking command of American cultural institutions____A good
read."—Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, author of Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community
"In this stunningly coherent and compelling account of the development of 'American modernity,' Duggan captures our interest with the sensational tale of lesbian love murder but then insists that we read this tale through turn-of-the-century debates over racial violence and against the backdrop of the medicalization of homosexuality. Sapphic Slashers has 'classic' written all over it."—^Judith Halberstam, author of Female Masculinity
"What Duggan does in this original and moving book is take a murder case from 1890s Memphis and make of it a prism through which to illuminate American modernity. Her method depends less on an account of the murder or of the judicial procedure that followed it than on an analysis of the many narratives—of lesbian love and sex and madness—^that the case occasioned.Juxtaposing these narratives to narratives of lynching, Duggan produces a tour de force of historical understanding." —Henry Abelove,Wesleyan University
Lisa Duggan is Associate Professor of American Studies and History at New York University. She is coauthor of Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture and coeditor of Our Monica, Ourselves:The Clinton Affair and National Interest. Vissza