W. Spurlin & J. Hayes 
Comparatively Queer 
Interrogating Identities Across Time and Cultures

These innovative essays take a comparative approach to queer studies while simultaneously queering the field of comparative literature, strengthening the interdisciplinary of both. The book focuses not only on comparative praxis, but also on interrogating our assumptions and categories of analysis.

Table of Content

Introduction: Comparing Queerly, Queering Comparison: Theorizing Identities between Cultures, Histories, and Disciplines; J.Hayes, M.R.Higonnet & W.J.Spurlin PART I: CROSSING TIME Queer from the Very Beginning: (En)gendering the Vernacular in Medieval France; K.Campbell Figural Historiography: Dogs, Humans, and Cynanthropic Becomings; C.Freccero Mapping Sapphic Modernity; S.S.Lanser ‘Fair Is Not Fair’: Queer Possibility and Fairground Performers in Western Europe and the United States, 1870–1935; F.Canadé Sautman Time’s Corpus: On Sexuality, Historiography, and the Indian Penal Code; A.Arondekar PART II: CROSSING CULTURES Double Trouble: Doing Gender in Hong Kong; M.-P.Ha Universal Particularities: Conceptions of Sexuality, Nationality, and Culture in France and the United States; T.J.D.Armbrecht ‘Words Create Worlds’: Rethinking Genre in the Animal Fables of Suniti Namjoshi and Vikram Seth; B.Jackson Genet among the Palestinians: Sex, Betrayal, and the Incomparable Real; J.Penney Afterword: Comparisons Worth Making; V.Traub

About the author

JARROD HAYES Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Michigan, USA. MARGARET R. HIGONNET Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut, USA and co-chair of the Gender Study Group at Harvard University’s Centre for European Studies. WILLIAM J. SPURLIN Reader in English and Director of the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence and Cultural Change at the University of Sussex, UK.