Call for Papers for a Panel entitled: ³Re-gendering the Male Homosexual in
Post-Wildean British Literature² at the NeMLA (Northeast Modern Language
Association) Convention, March 2-5, 2006, Philadelphia, PA
 
Using the pioneering work of Joseph Bristow¹s Effeminate England and Alan
Sinfield¹s The Wilde Century as starting points, this panel seeks to examine
the gendering of male homosexuality in post-Oscar Wilde, post-Labouchére
amendment, post-Cleveland Street scandal, post-Boulton and Park scandal
British literature (1895-2005). The confluence of the above events
solidified the cultural gendering of the male homosexual as effeminate, a
cultural stereotype that continues to thrive. Yet the literary responses to
this gendering do not uniformly follow the culture that produces them.
Bristow¹s work does a fine job of detailing male effeminacy in late
nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century homoerotic writing, but his
limited focus leaves out the masculine homosexual in the literature of the
same period. This panel strives to examine the masculine homosexual male
character along with the effeminate homosexual male character together in
hopes of uncovering a ³homosexual² response to this forced gender identity.
Possible topics may include, but are not limited to the following: E.M.
Forster¹s emphasis on the masculine working-class male as homosexual ideal
in Maurice and in his short fiction, D. H. Lawrence¹s masculine
homoeroticism in Women in Love, the homosexual implications of Virginia
Woolf¹s gender lollapalooza that is Orlando, Quentin Crisp¹s militant
effeminacy in The Naked Civil Servant, Lytton Strachey¹s effeminate
performance of self, Christopher Isherwood¹s tales, Alan Hollinghurst¹s The
Line of Beauty, Jamie O¹Neill¹s At Swim, Two Boys, or Clive Barker¹s
Imajica.
 
 
Send 300 word abstract with a short C.V. to Damion Clark at
drclark_at_mail.umd.edu by September 15, 2005. Accepted panelists must be, or
become current members of NeMLA by October 15, 2005.
 
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Received on Wed Jun 15 2005 - 17:26:47 EDT