Queering the Underworld : Slumming, Literature, and the Undoing of Lesbian and Gay History

S. Herring

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. "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.