Browsing by Subject "Lesbians in literature"

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Beyond sexual satisfaction : pleasure and autonomy in women’s inter-war novels in England and Ireland
(2011-05) Bacon, Catherine M.; Moore, Lisa L. (Lisa Lynne); Cullingford, Elizabeth; Carter, Mia; Eastman, Caroline; Garrity, Jane
My dissertation offers a new look at how women authors used popular genres to negotiate their economic, artistic, and sexual autonomy, as well as their national and imperial identities, in the context of the changes brought by modernity. As medical science and popular media attempted to delineate women’s sexual natures, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Winifred Holtby, Kate O’Brien, and Molly Keane created narratives which challenged not only psychoanalytic proscriptions about the need for sexual satisfaction, but traditional ideas about women’s inherent modesty. They absorbed, revised, and occasionally rejected outright the discourses of sexology in order to advocate a more diffuse sensuality; for these writers, adventure, travel, independence, creativity, and love between women provided satisfactions as rich as those ascribed to normative heterosexuality. I identify a history of queer sexuality in both Irish and English contexts, one which does not conform to emergent lesbian identity while still exceeding the limits of heteronormativity.
Chicana feminist voices : in search of Chicana lesbian voices from Aztlán to cyberspace
(2001-12) Hernandez, Lisa Justine; Slatin, John M.; Sanchez, Lisa M.
Chicana Feminist Voices: In Search of Chicana Lesbian Voices from Aztlán to Cyberspace, analyzes an assortment of Chicana feminist writings from the 1970s to the present. This project begins to mend what I see as an epistemological disjuncture in the historical record of Chicana feminist writing between the ‘70s and the ‘80s; it also anticipates additional changes taking place on the World-Wide-Web. My work studies how contemporary Chicana lesbian writing maps the transfiguration of Chicana identity and epistemologies. The emergence of Chicana lesbian literature reveals that Chicana lesbian feminist epistemologies play an important role in altering Chicana/o cultural production, especially the definition of community in Chicana/o literature. The primary objectives of the project are multiple: to map out the major contours of Chicana feminist discourse, to identify some general and specific parties involved in the construction of Chicana feminist discourse, to understand the influence of Chicana lesbian feminism on Chicana feminism, to discern the implications of lesbian of color consciousness for Chicana/o identity politics, and to hypothesize the direction, shape, and influence Chicana feminist discourse will have on the World-Wide-Web. Source material for this project ranges from the journals of the 1970s Chicano movement, through lesbian of color writing of the 1980s, to women of color Web sites of the 1990s and 2000s. A secondary aim of my work is the reclamation and preservation of archival Chicana writing and the creation of an electronic database of women of color Web sites. My argument about the importance of revealing and connecting voices emerges with the help of a variety of works by Chicana feminists and Chicana and Anglo psychologists: Anna Nieto-Gómez, Chéla Sandoval, Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, Aida Hurtado, Estela Portillo-Trambley, Robert Kegan, Mary Field Belenky, Blythe McVicker Clinchy, Nancy Rule Goldberger, and Jill Mattuck Tarule. The project consists of five chapters: chapter 1, “In Search of Chicana Lesbian Voices,” chapter 2, "The Weave of Women’s Writings in the Chicano Movement: Gender Struggles and Discursive Practices," chapter 3, "Tongues Untied: This Bridge Called My Back," chapter 4, "CONNECTed Voices: Chicanas and Women of Color Feminism, " chapter 5, "Epilogue: The Future of Chicana Feminist Writing on the World-Wide-Web."