English Literature Research Areas
Use the Databases and Digital Collections to Find LGBTQIA+ Art, Literature, Film, and More
Sogi's Story. N.d. Australian Human Rights Commission, Archives of Sexuality and Gender, Gale Document Number AIHHSG122030620
Gender & Sexuality
From the English Department:
The study of gender and sexuality is central to the research and teaching of a number of scholars in Iowa’s English department. Whether working in the more established area of women’s studies or in newer areas like sexuality studies, queer theory, masculinity studies, or in some combination of these, faculty offer courses in virtually all historical periods and in a range of geographical areas (British, American, African, South Asian, Asian American, and transnational). Faculty vary in their specialization and focus: from medieval poetry, Victorian fiction, and native women's literature to queer theory, popular culture, queer diasporas and sexualities, and postcolonial feminist theory. Students benefit from cross-listed and related courses offered by faculty affiliated with the Sexuality Studies Program, the Department of Women’s Studies, and International Programs.
Collections and Companions
Click on the "i" info icon after each book title to view a brief description about the following books from the University of Iowa Libraries' catalog:
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Feminism As World Literature
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The conventional lineage of World Literature starts with Goethe and moves through Marx, Said, Moretti, and Damrosch, among others. What if there is another way to trace the lineage, starting with Simone de Beauvoir and moving through Hannah Arendt, Assia Djebar, Octavia Butler, Donna Haraway, Karen Barad, and Gayatri Spivak? What ideas and issues get left out of the current foundations that have institutionalized World Literature, and what can be added, challenged, or changed with this tweaking of the referential terminology? Feminism as World Literature redefines the thematic and theoretical contents of World Literature in feminist terms as well as rethinking feminist terms, analyses, frameworks, and concepts in a World Literature context. Other ideas built into World Literature and its criticism are viewed here by feminist framings, including the environment, technology, immigration, translation, work, race, governance, image, sound, religion, affect, violence, media, future, and history. The authors recognize genres, strategies, and themes of World Literature that demonstrate feminism as integral to the world-making gestures of literary form and production. In other words, this volume looks to readings and modes of reading that expose how the historical worldliness of texts allows for feminist interventions that might not sit clearly or comfortably on the surfaces.
ISBN: 9781501371189Publication Date: 2022-12-01 -
The Postworld in-Between Utopia and Dystopia
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This collection of essays offers global perspectives on feminist utopia and dystopia in speculative literature, film, and art, working from a range of intersectional approaches to examine key works and genres in both their specific cultural context and a wider, global, epistemological, critical background. The international, diverse contributions, including a Foreword by Gregory Claeys, draw upon posthumanism, speculative realism, speculative feminism, object-oriented ontology, new materialisms, and post-Anthropocene studies to propose alternative perspectives on gender, environment, as well as alternate futures and pasts rendered in fiction. Instead of binary divisions into utopia vs dystopia, the collection explores genres transcending this dichotomy, scrutinising the oeuvre of both established and emerging writers, directors, and critics. This is a rich and unique collection suitable for scholars and students studying feminist literature, media cultural studies, and women's and gender studies.
ISBN: 9780367537043Publication Date: 2021-12-30 -
Exploring Gender Studies and Feminism Through Literature and Media
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The evolution of how gender and feminism have been portrayed within media and literature has changed dramatically over the years as society continues to understand the importance of representation within entertainment. To fully understand how the field has changed, further study on the current and past forms of media representation is required. Exploring Gender Studies and Feminism Through Literature and Media engages with literary texts, digital media, films, and art to consider the relevant issues and empowerment strategies of feminism and gender and discusses the latest theories and ideas. Covering topics such as gender performativity, homophobia, patriarchy, sexuality, LGBTQ community, digital studies, and empowerment strategies, this major reference work is ideal for government officials, policymakers, researchers, scholars, academicians, practitioners, instructors, and students.
ISBN: 9781668465721Publication Date: 2022-06-24 -
Constructing the Literary Self
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In the twentieth century, as previously excluded groups, including ethnic minorities, women, the disabled, and the differently gendered, gained a voice in society, group identity also changed and new definitions became necessary. Whether through their group affiliations or in spite of these affiliations, many individuals sought a new definition of themselves. As can be expected, much literature explores these changes and depicts the quest for new definitions and the search for individuality in the light of new definitions. Construction or definition of the self was once available only to the elite, and the freedom of some to define their identity was sacrificed so that others could make their own self-definitions; this practice can be found throughout much of history. This volume is about that kind of oppression and various strategies of escaping from oppression as depicted in serious literature. Its thirteen essays, all by recognized scholars, are divided into five categories: Race, Gender, and the Self; Assimilation and the Self; Black Males and the Self; Female Sexuality and the Self; and The Family and the Self.
ISBN: 9781443845304Publication Date: 2013-04-01 -
LGBTQ+ Literature in the West
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A survey, within one volume, of the history of critical responses to LGBTQ literature from the beginning to the present day, this book explores changes in attitudes, literature and criticism over a period of two and a half thousand years. For various reasons it focuses on literature of 'the West', trying to give readers a clear sense, within a relatively short compass, not only of the development of 'queer' literature (perhaps the most encompassing of all terms) but especially of critical responses to that literature, notably during the past century and particularly the past fifty years. All in all, this book offers a roadmap to much of the excellent scholarship concerning LGBTQ literature that has arisen in the last half-century - an era of unparalleled interest in the topic and an era that has moved the topic from the distant sidelines of literary study to a place ever closer to the center of things.
ISBN: 9781350371828Publication Date: 2023-05-18 -
Bouncing Back: Queer Resilience in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century English Literature and Culture
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LGBTQ people have strategies of resilience at their disposal to help them deal with the challenge that heteronormativity as a power structure poses to their affective lives. This book makes the concept of resilience available to queer literary and cultural studies, analysing these strategies in terms of narration, performance, bodies, and space. Resilience turns out to be a highly interactive mode of being in the world, which can set free creative energy as well as draw inspiration and energy from artistic work. Authors and artists discussed include Katherine Mansfield, Christopher Isherwood, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Jeanette Winterson, Michael Cunningham, and Ian McKellen.
ISBN: 9783837650273Publication Date: 2020-06-02 -
The Routledge Companion to Masculinity in American Literature and Culture
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Recently, the U.S. has seen a rise in misogynistic and race-based violence perpetrated by men expressing a sense of grievance, from "incels" to alt-right activists. Grounding sociological, historical, political, and economic analyses of masculinity through the lens of cultural narratives in many forms and expressions, The Routledge Companion to Masculinity in American Literature and Culture suggests that how we examine the stories that shape us in turn shapes our understanding of our current reality and gives us language for imagining better futures. Masculinity is more than a description of traits associated with particular performances of gender. It is more than a study of gender and social power. It is an examination of the ways in which gender affects our capacity to engage ethically with each other in complex human societies. This volume offers essays from a range of established, global experts in American masculinity as well as new and upcoming scholars in order to explore not just what masculinity once meant, has come to mean, and may mean in the future in the U.S.; it also articulates what is at stake with our conceptions of masculinity.
ISBN: 9780367520083Publication Date: 2021-12-22 -
Detoxing Masculinity in Anglophone Literature and Culture: In Search of Good Men
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This edited volume rethinks Masculinity Studies by breaking away from the notion of the perpetual crisis of masculinity. It argues that not enough has beendone to distinguish patriarchy from masculinity and proposes to detox masculinity by offering a collection of positive representations of men in fictional and non-fictional texts. The editors show how ideas of hegemonic and toxic masculinity have been too fixed on the exploration of dominance and subservience, and too little on the men (and the male characters in fiction) who behave following other ethical, personal and socially accepted patterns. Bringing together research from different periods and genres, this collection provides broad, multidisciplinary insights into alternative representations of masculinity.
ISBN: 3031221443Publication Date: 2023
Contextual Resources
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Archives of Sexuality and Gender This link opens in a new windowOur subscription includes LGBTQ History parts I and II. This resource Illuminates the experiences not just of the LGBTQ community as a whole, but of individuals of different races, ethnicities, ages, religions, political orientations, and geographical locations that constitute this community. Features historical records of political and social organizations founded by LGBTQ individuals, as well as publications by and for lesbians and gays, and extensive coverage of governmental responses to the AIDS crisis. Includes gay and lesbian newspapers from more than 35 countries, reports, policy statements, and other documents related to gay rights and health, including the worldwide impact of AIDS, materials tracing LGBTQ activism in Britain from 1950 through 1980, and more. Documents span from 1940 to 2014, with the bulk from 1950 to 1990.
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Defining Gender, 1450-1910 This link opens in a new windowExplore gender through a vast body of British source material from the fifteenth to early twentieth century. Through correspondence, advice literature, periodicals, ephemera and government documents, traditional models of gender and contemporary perceptions of these can be explored. This is an interdisciplinary resource that will enrich the teaching and research of gender, history, sociology, education and literature.
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Everyday Life & Women in America, c1800-1920 This link opens in a new window
This digital collection provides access to rare primary source material on American social, cultural, and popular history from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History, Duke University and The New York Public Library. It comprises thousands of fully searchable images (alongside transcriptions) of monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes, emphasizing conduct of life and domestic management literature, the daily lives of women and men, and contrasts in regional, urban and rural cultures.
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Gender: Identity and Social Change This link opens in a new windowEssential primary sources documenting the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations, and the struggle for women’s rights, from the 19th century to the present.
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GenderWatch This link opens in a new windowPrimarily a full text database with some abstracts that contains periodicals, academic journals, newsletters, magazines, regional publications, and government reports focused on gender and women's issues. [Not compatible with Internet Explorer 9]
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Gerritsen Collection: Women's History Online, 1543-1945 This link opens in a new windowThe Gerritsen Collection was begun by Aletta Jacobs Gerritsen in the late 1800s. The online resource delivers two million page images exactly as they appeared in the original printed works. It includes monographs, periodicals and pamphlets in fifteen languages, and is searchable by keyword and Boolean operators.
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Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) History This link opens in a new windowThis encyclopedia covers LGBTQ topics in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East, as well as North America, and takes an interdisciplinary approach to the subject, using film, literature, human rights, politics, landmark legislation, activism, the arts, language, sports, and historical events as points of entry into the content.
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Godey's Lady's Book This link opens in a new window19th century magazine intended to "entertain and educate" women of America. Early issues include biographical sketches, articles about mineralogy, handcrafts, fashion, dance, equestrienne procedures, health & hygiene, recipes & remedies, and piano forte sheet music. Later issues contain book reviews and works by such 19th century authors as Poe, Hawthorne, Longfellow and Stowe. Illustrations.
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LGBT Thought and Culture This link opens in a new windowLGBT Thought and Culture is an online resource hosting books, periodicals, and archival materials documenting LGBT political, social and cultural movements throughout the twentieth century and into the present day.
Searching InfoHawk+ and Locating Materials in the Library
Suggested Search Terms:
- Masculinity in literature
- Feminism in literature
- English Literature -- Women Authors
- English Literature -- Women Authors -- History and Criticism
- Feminist literary criticism
- Gays' Writings
- Homosexuality and Literature
- Lesbians' Writings
- Queer Theory
- Gender identity in literature
- Sexuality in literature
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Women and Literature -- United States
Call numbers beginning with PN (General Literature) PR (English Literature), and PS (American Literature) through PS3115 are located on the West side of the 4th floor of the Main Library.
Call numbers beginning with PS3117 (American Literature) are located on the West side of the second floor of the Main Library.
Additional Literature Databases
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Bibliography of English Women Writers 1500-1640 This link opens in a new windowlist of scholarship about 738 recovered writers and located texts, canonical and non-canonical. It identifies many hitherto unknown writers, including among them not only already familiar figures, but also women refugees such as the recusants, women in the colonies, Marrano women (Anusot), women translators, and English women writers in French, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh.
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JSTOR (Journal Storage) This link opens in a new windowProvides image and full-text online access to back issues of selected scholarly journals in history, economics, political science, philosophy, mathematics and other fields of the humanities and social sciences. Consult the online tables of contents for holdings, as coverage varies for each titles. Journals may be searched across multiple titles as well as by the individual titles below
Note that this database comprises mostly back issues: for most titles the JSTOR database does NOT include full text of the most recent 3 to 5 years. -
Literature Online (LION) This link opens in a new windowA fully searchable library of over 350,000 works of English and American literature, overseen by an academic advisory board.
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MLA International Bibliography (EBSCO Version) This link opens in a new window
The MLA International Bibliography is a subject index for books, articles and websites published on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics. It is produced by the Modern Language Association (MLA), an organization dedicated to the study and teaching of language and literature. The electronic version of the Bibliography dates back to 1925 and contains over 2 million citations from more than 4,400 periodicals (including peer-reviewed e-journals) and 1,000 book publishers.
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Project Muse This link opens in a new windowWith full text for well over 300 journal titles from university publishers, Project MUSE covers the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, and many others. Coverage begins in 1995.
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Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History This link opens in a new windowThis resource brings together hundreds of accounts by women of their travels across the globe from the early 19th century to the late 20th century. Students and researchers will find sources covering a variety of topics including; architecture; art; the British Empire; climate; customs; exploration; family life; housing; industry; language; monuments; mountains; natural history; politics and diplomacy; race; religion; science; shopping; war.
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Women Writers Online This link opens in a new windowProvides a list of women author's and links to a full-text of their various works.
Journals
Click on the "i" info icon after each title to view a brief description about the following literary journals:
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Contemporary Women's Writings Contemporary Women’s Writing critically assesses writing by women authors who have published approximately from 1970 to the present, especially in essays that reach beyond a reading of a single text in order to challenge existing thinking or extend debates about an author, genre, topic, or theoretical perspective and relate literary analysis to wider cultural and intellectual contexts.The journal aims to reflect retrospectively on developments throughout the period, to survey the variety of contemporary work, and to anticipate the new and provocative in women’s writing. It welcomes theoretical, cultural, historical, geographical, formalist, and political approaches to contemporary women’s writing.
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GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian & Gay Studies Providing a much-needed forum for interdisciplinary discussion, GLQ publishes scholarship, criticism, and commentary in areas as diverse as law, science studies, religion, political science, and literary studies. Its aim is to offer queer perspectives on all issues touching on sex and sexuality. In an effort to achieve the widest possible historical, geographic, and cultural scope, GLQ particularly seeks out new research into historical periods before the twentieth century, into non-Anglophone cultures, and into the experience of those who have been marginalized by race, ethnicity, age, social class, body morphology, or sexual practice. A notable feature is "The GLQ Archive," a special section featuring previously unpublished or unavailable primary materials that may serve as sources for future work in lesbian and gay studies.
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The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide The Gay & Lesbian Review / Worldwide is a bimonthly magazine targeting an educated readership of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered (GLBT) men and women. Under the tagline, "a bimonthly journal of history, culture, and politics," the G&LR publishes essays in a wide range of disciplines as well as reviews of books, movies, and plays.
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Lambda Book Report Articles, commentary, reviews and book reviews representing a wide variety of gay and lesbian ideas and perspectives.
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Legacy Legacy is the official journal of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers. It is the only journal to focus specifically on American women's writings from the seventeenth through the midtwentieth century. Each issue's articles cover a wide range of topics: examinations of the works of individual authors; genre studies; analyses of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexualities in women's literature; and historical and material cultural issues pertinent to women's lives and literary works. In addition, Legacy regularly publishes profiles of lesser-known or newly recovered authors, reprints of primary works in all genres, and book reviews covering current scholarship in the field.
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Lodestar Quarterly: An online journal of the finest gay, lesbian, and queer literature An online journal of the finest gay, lesbian, and queer literature. Though the journal is no longer publishing, all previous issues remain available online.
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Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature is a scholarly journal devoted to the study of the relations between women and writing of every period and in all languages. Publishing articles, notes, archival research, and reviews, Tulsa Studies seeks path-breaking literary, historicist, and theoretical work by both established and emerging scholars.
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Journal of Gender Studies Interdisciplinary journal publishing articles relating to gender from a feminist perspective.
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Journal of Feminism and Gender Studies The Journal of Feminism and Gender Studies (JFGS) main objectives are to develop scientific discourse and analysis on issues of gender and feminism. JFGF accommodates articles with both empirical and discursive approaches by providing freedom of scientific development within the framework of feminism and gender perspectives. Articles with empirical and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of feminism and gender are preferable.
Web Resources
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Black Feminist FutureBFF is a movement incubator that focuses on the dynamic possibilities of galvanizing the social and political power of Black feminisms as a blueprint for liberation. It intends to amplify and support the leadership and power of Black feminist leaders and increase the capacity and impact of Black feminist organizations, and movements.
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Digital Transgender ArchiveThe purpose of the Digital Transgender Archive (DTA) is to increase the accessibility of transgender history by providing an online hub for digitized historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world.
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The Gender Ads ProjectThis Web site is focused on the cultural intersections of gender and advertising. The goal is to promote greater awareness of the relationships of gender and advertising as well as an understanding of the social, cultural, political, personal, psychological and other effects of gender and advertising.
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The GLBT Historical SocietyThe GLBT Historical Society collects, preserves, exhibits and makes accessible to the public materials and knowledge to support and promote understanding of LGBTQ history, culture and arts in all their diversity.
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Human Rights Campaign (HRC)HRC envisions a world where every member of the LGBTQ+ family has the freedom to live their truth without fear, and with equality under the law. HRC empowers our 3 million members and supporters to mobilize against attacks on the most marginalized people in our community. HRC's goal is to ensure that all LGBTQ+ people, and particularly those of us who are trans, people of color and HIV+, are treated as full and equal citizens within our movement, across our country and around the world.
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I'm from Driftwood: The LGBTQIA+ Story ArchiveThe stories on I’m From Driftwood send a powerful message to LGBTQIA+ people everywhere: you exist, you matter, you belong. IFD’s collection of more than 1,400 professionally-produced videos and user-submitted written oral histories are shared freely online – giving voice to and forging connections among often marginalized or silenced people, educating people about the joys and challenges, complexities and intersectionalities of LGBTQIA+ lives, and increasing empathy in IFD viewers.
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Iowa Women's ArchivesThe Iowa Women’s Archives holds more than 1,200 manuscript collections that chronicle the lives and work of Iowa women, their families, and their communities. These personal papers and organizational records date from the 19th century to the present. Together with oral histories, they document the activities of Iowa women throughout the state and beyond its borders. The Iowa Women’s Archives is open to the public.
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The Lesbian Herstory ArchivesThe Lesbian Herstory Archives is home to a large, diversified collection of materials by and about lesbians and their communities.
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ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives (USC Libraries)It is the mission of ONE Archives at the USC Libraries to collect, preserve, and make accessible LGBTQ historical materials while promoting new scholarship on and public awareness of queer histories
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OutHistoryOriginally founded in October 2008 by Jonathan Ned Katz, this site is part online encyclopedia/part digital archive of LGBTQ histories. It includes timelines, bibliographies, oral histories, visual and textual materials, and entries on periods, people, places, and subjects as well as a blog.
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Queer Digital History ProjectThe QDHP is an independent community digital history project documenting pre-2010 LGBTQ digital spaces online.
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QZAP - Queer Zine Archive ProjectThe Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP) was first launched in November 2003 in an effort to preserve queer zines and make them available to other queers, researchers, historians, punks, and anyone else who has an interest DIY publishing and underground queer communities.
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Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture (Duke University)The Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture acquires, preserves, and makes available to a large population of researchers published and unpublished materials that reflect the public and private lives of women past and present.
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Schlesinger Library (Radcliffe Institute for Higher Study, Harvard University)One of the special collections libraries within the Harvard Library—the oldest library system in the United States—the Schlesinger Library is considered the leading center for scholarship on the history of women in the United States, with collections that span civil rights and feminism, health and sexuality, work and family life, education and the professions, and culinary history and etiquette.
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Transgender Archives (University of Victoria)We preserve original documents recording the history of pioneering activists, community leaders, and researchers who have contributed to the betterment of Trans+ people. We are accessible to everyone, free of charge.
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Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW)Located at Wellesley College, WCW is the largest academic research and action institute in the U.S. that is focused on women and gender and driven by social change.
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The History Project: Documenting LGBTQ BostonThe History Project is focused exclusively on documenting and preserving the history of New England’s LGBTQ communities and sharing that history with LGBTQ individuals, organizations, allies, and the public. The History Project maintains one of the largest independent LGBTQ+ archives in the nation, which includes more than 250 collections from organizations and individuals that range from the records of early Gay Liberation organizations and photographs of pre-Stonewall Boston to objects such as T-shirts and buttons and materials documenting the marriage equality movement.