The Lesbian Premodern

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xx

   PDF

2. Introduction: The Lesbian Premodern

   1. Introduction: The Lesbian Premodern

      • Noreen Giffney, Michelle M. Sauer, Diane Watt

      Pages 1-17

3. Theories and Historiographies

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 19-19

      PDF

   2. The Present Future of Lesbian Historiography

      • Valerie Traub

      Pages 21-34

   3. A “Wrangling Parliament”: Terminology and Audience in Medieval European Literary Studies and Lesbian Studies

      • Anne Laskaya

      Pages 35-47

   4. Lesbian History and Erotic Reading

      • Lara Farina

      Pages 49-60

   5. The Queer Time of the Lesbian Premodern

      • Carla Freccero

      Pages 61-73

   6. “Virgins” and “Not-Women”: Dissident Gender Positions

      • Theodora A. Jankowski

      Pages 75-89

4. Readings and Histories

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 91-91

      PDF

   2. Virgin Desires: Reading a Homoerotics of Female Monastic Community

      • Lisa M. C. Weston

      Pages 93-104

   3. Medieval Barbie Dolls: Femme Figures in Ascetic Collections

      • Anna Kłosowska

      Pages 105-117

   4. Naming Love: The God Kama, The Goddess Ganga, and the Child of Two Women

      • Ruth Vanita

      Pages 119-130

   5. Remembering Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge

      • Judith M. Bennett

      Pages 131-143

   6. Toward a Philology of the Premodern Lesbian

      • Helmut Puff

      Pages 145-157

5. Encounters With the Lesbian Premodern

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 159-159

      PDF

   2. Lesbian Time

      • Heike Bauer

      Pages 161-169

   3. A Usable Past?

      • Lillian Faderman

      Pages 171-178

   4. Sacramentality and the Lesbian Premodern

      • Elizabeth Freeman

      Pages 179-186

   5. Necessity is the Invention of Lesbians

      • Linda Garber

      Pages 187-192

   6. Lesbian Ghosts

      • Martha Vicinus

      Pages 193-201

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.

• Europe
• gender
• historiography
• history
• premodern
• women

"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 this pre- and early modern material impacts the entire field." - Carolyn Dinshaw, New York University

"It has been the case for some time now that the most rigorous and mind-bending queer scholarship focuses on medieval and early modern sexualities. This collection represents what is best in this work, and clears the way for an open-ended conversation across periods. Prepare to be schooled in the pleasures of anachronism." - Heather Love, University of Pennsylvania

"The Lesbian Premodern's editors have collected a rich and flexible set of texts that speak to and out of myriad sources to discover sites where same-sex desire might be discerned in small gaps in the history of the inaudible . . . The Lesbian Premodern's daring derives from its editors' purposeful gathering of texts that tangle temporalities to make a nonmodern lesbian - italics and quotation mark free - typographically possible." - Michèle Aina Barale, Amherst College

"The Lesbian Premodern is a stunning achievement in laying the groundwork for along overdue transhistorical sexuality studies, one that does not assume simplistic diachronicities between the past and present, but which instead tracks and problematizes the complex and untimely traffic between 'Then' and 'Now' . . . . What emerges is a potent and unprecedented framework for the writing of new lesbian histories and theories, as well as the forging of new relational virtualities between scholars who might otherwise never 'hook up'." - Eileen A. Joy, editor of postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies and Lead Ingenitor, BABEL Working Group

Noreen Giffney is a research coordinator in the Graduate Research and Education Programme in Gender, Culture, and Identity in the Humanties Institute at the University College Dublin, Ireland.

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