At the start of the twentieth century, tales of "how the other half
lives" experienced a surge in popularity. People looking to go
slumming without leaving home turned to these narratives for
spectacular revelations of the underworld and sordid details about
the deviants who populated it.
In this major rethinking of American literature and culture, Scott
Herring explores how a key group of authors manipulated this genre
to paradoxically evade the confines of sexual identification.
"Queering the Underworld" examines a range of writers, from Jane
Addams and Willa Cather to Carl Van Vechten and Djuna Barnes,
revealing how they fulfilled the conventions of slumming literature
but undermined its goals, and in the process, queered the genre
itself. Their work frustrated the reader's desire for sexual
knowledge, restored the inscrutability of sexual identity, and cast
doubt on the value of a homosexual subculture made visible and
therefore subject to official control.
Herring is persuasive and polemical in connecting these writers to
ongoing debates about lesbian and gay history and politics, and
"Queering the Underworld" will be widely read by students and
scholars of literature, history, and sexuality.
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