How to Do the History of Queer American Literature

Abstract: The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature marshals many of the field's most brilliant and influential scholars in order to construct a queer American literary history from as many sharp-eyed perspectives as possible. It spans multiple modes of historiography, attends to manifold configurations of gender and sexual non-normativity as well as racial and ethnic identities, and demonstrates a plethora of methodological approaches. In bringing together these multifarious strategies and focuses, the volume magnificently accomplishes its ambitious goal of representing the queer history of American literature. Yet it is also a refreshingly queer narration of that history, juxtaposing accepted versions of the stories it tells with cutting-edge provocations, canonical figures with those deserving of more attention, and standard notions of what counts as literary with understudied genres. For scholars of modern literature, it is a particular boon, with the majority of its chapters attending to queer American literature since 1900.