This book is a collection of essays written during the 1980s and 1990s, generated as parts of other, larger activist efforts going on at the time. Read together, the essays trace the progress of the conversations between different activist groups, and between the authors of the pieces, Lisa Duggan and Nan Hunter, creating a bridge between feminists, gay activists, those in politics, and those in the law.

Since the 1995 publication of Sex Wars, the political landscape has altered significantly. Yet the issues (and essays) are still relevant today. The anniversary edition contains a new chapter dealing with the changes in the law since the book's publication (Lawrence v. Texas, for example).

This book is a collection of essays written during the 1980s and 1990s, generated as parts of other, larger activist efforts going on at the time. Read together, the essays trace the progress of the conversations between different activist groups, and between the authors of the pieces, Lisa Duggan and Nan Hunter, creating a bridge between feminists, gay activists, those in politics, and those in the law.

Since the 1995 publication of Sex Wars, the political landscape has altered significantly. Yet the issues (and essays) are still relevant today. The anniversary edition contains a new chapter dealing with the changes in the law since the book's publication (Lawrence v. Texas, for example).

"Astute."-New York Times Ayn Rand's complicated notoriety as popular writer, leader of a political and philosophical cult, reviled intellectual, and ostentatious public figure endured beyond her death in 1982. In the twenty-first century, she has been resurrected as a serious reference point for mainstream figures, especially those on the political right from Paul Ryan to Donald Trump. Mean Girl follows Rand's trail through the twentieth century from the Russian Revolution to the Cold War and traces her posthumous appeal and the influence of her novels via her cruel, surly, sexy heroes. Outlining the impact of Rand's philosophy of selfishness, Mean Girl illuminates the Randian shape of our neoliberal, contemporary culture of greed and the dilemmas we face in our political present.

"Astute."-New York Times Ayn Rand's complicated notoriety as popular writer, leader of a political and philosophical cult, reviled intellectual, and ostentatious public figure endured beyond her death in 1982. In the twenty-first century, she has been resurrected as a serious reference point for mainstream figures, especially those on the political right from Paul Ryan to Donald Trump. Mean Girl follows Rand's trail through the twentieth century from the Russian Revolution to the Cold War and traces her posthumous appeal and the influence of her novels via her cruel, surly, sexy heroes. Outlining the impact of Rand's philosophy of selfishness, Mean Girl illuminates the Randian shape of our neoliberal, contemporary culture of greed and the dilemmas we face in our political present.

On a winter day in 1892, in the broad daylight of downtown Memphis, Tennessee, a middle class woman named Alice Mitchell slashed the throat of her lover, Freda Ward, killing her instantly. Local, national, and international newspapers, medical and scientific publications, and popular fiction writers all clamored to cover the ensuing "girl lovers" murder trial. Lisa Duggan locates in this sensationalized event the emergence of the lesbian in U.S. mass culture and shows how newly "modern" notions of normality and morality that arose from such cases still haunt and distort lesbian and gay politics to the present day.
Situating this story alongside simultaneously circulating lynching narratives (and its resistant versions, such as those of Memphis antilynching activist Ida B. Wells) Duggan reveals how stories of sex and violence were crucial to the development of American modernity. While careful to point out the differences between the public reigns of terror that led to many lynchings and the rarer instances of the murder of one woman by another privately motivated woman, Duggan asserts that dominant versions of both sets of stories contributed to the marginalization of African Americans and women while solidifying a distinctly white, male, heterosexual form of American citizenship. Having explored the role of turn-of-the-century print media--and in particular their tendency toward sensationalism--Duggan moves next to a review of sexology literature and to novels, most notably Radclyffe Hall's "The Well of Loneliness." "Sapphic Slashers" concludes with two appendices, one of which presents a detailed summary of Ward's murder, the trial, and Mitchell's eventual institutionalization. The other presents transcriptions of letters exchanged between the two women prior to the crime.
Combining cultural history, feminist and queer theory, narrative analysis, and compelling storytelling, "Sapphic Slashers" provides the first history of the emergence of the lesbian in twentieth-century mass culture.

On a winter day in 1892, in the broad daylight of downtown Memphis, Tennessee, a middle class woman named Alice Mitchell slashed the throat of her lover, Freda Ward, killing her instantly. Local, national, and international newspapers, medical and scientific publications, and popular fiction writers all clamored to cover the ensuing "girl lovers" murder trial. Lisa Duggan locates in this sensationalized event the emergence of the lesbian in U.S. mass culture and shows how newly "modern" notions of normality and morality that arose from such cases still haunt and distort lesbian and gay politics to the present day.
Situating this story alongside simultaneously circulating lynching narratives (and its resistant versions, such as those of Memphis antilynching activist Ida B. Wells) Duggan reveals how stories of sex and violence were crucial to the development of American modernity. While careful to point out the differences between the public reigns of terror that led to many lynchings and the rarer instances of the murder of one woman by another privately motivated woman, Duggan asserts that dominant versions of both sets of stories contributed to the marginalization of African Americans and women while solidifying a distinctly white, male, heterosexual form of American citizenship. Having explored the role of turn-of-the-century print media--and in particular their tendency toward sensationalism--Duggan moves next to a review of sexology literature and to novels, most notably Radclyffe Hall's "The Well of Loneliness." "Sapphic Slashers" concludes with two appendices, one of which presents a detailed summary of Ward's murder, the trial, and Mitchell's eventual institutionalization. The other presents transcriptions of letters exchanged between the two women prior to the crime.
Combining cultural history, feminist and queer theory, narrative analysis, and compelling storytelling, "Sapphic Slashers" provides the first history of the emergence of the lesbian in twentieth-century mass culture.