Sexuality and Sociality in Literary Productions, 1974-1997 Jaime Cantrell Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected]
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2014 Southern Sapphisms: Sexuality and Sociality in Literary Productions, 1974-1997 Jaime Cantrell Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Cantrell, Jaime, "Southern Sapphisms: Sexuality and Sociality in Literary Productions, 1974-1997" (2014). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 3292. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/3292 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. SOUTHERN SAPPHISMS: SEXUALITY AND SOCIALITY IN LITERARY PRODUCTIONS, 1974-1997 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Jaime L. Cantrell B.A., The University of Southern Mississippi, 2007 M.A., The University of Alabama, 2009 August 2014! © 2014 Jaime Lynn Cantrell All Rights Reserved! ! ii To Chris, the best. ! ! ! iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are so many people who deserve recognition and gratitude; thanking them all is a damn near impossible task. At Louisiana State University, I wish to distinguish my dissertation committee. Its chair, Katherine Henninger, was an exceptionally committed reader. I am deeply indebted to her. She provided me with the countless comments and provocations that gave unparalleled shape and direction to Southern Sapphisms. More than that, she imparted and instilled in me a strong sense of the import of articulating my scholarly identity, and what that truly means for my writing and career. Benjamin Kahan has encouraged this research from the very beginning, offering generous and steadfast support throughout. Without his renowned guidance, I would be far less skilled in nearly every genre of academic writing: from seminar papers and library fellowship applications to job letters to book proposals. Thank you, Benjy. Michael Bibler, the Southern Sexuality Studies Scholar, was a part of my thinking for this project long before he ever arrived at LSU. Michael Bibler, the Southern Sexuality Studies Scholar and Mentor, epitomizes the kind of all-star professor that I aspire to be. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to shake my inner fan girl around him and/or his cats. Finally, for her sustaining advice on how to navigate the profession with purpose and poise, and for her unique, invaluable ability to talk me down from the rafters, I wish to thank Elsie Michie. In the Department of English at Louisiana State University, I also wish to mention Dan Novak and Pallavi Rastogi: both graciously devoted time and energy on my behalf at ! iv various points in my academic career. From the graduate cohort, Michael Griffin, Laura Jones, and Amanda Wicks deserve recognition here—they were my office mates, carpool buddies, and writing group members. Socially, and certainly, there are many cherished departmental colleagues who should be included here. Of these, I am glad for Stephanie Osburn Krassenstein. She is my best friend, and I say that with equal amounts of hubris and humility. I’m especially grateful to students from my summer 2012 “Sexual Otherness in Southern Fiction,” and spring 2013 “Lesbian Writers, Lesbian Writing,” classes for challenging my thinking both within and beyond the classroom. At the time, these courses validated my dissertation project—and by extension, my own identity as a scholar—both in terms of my knowledge of the field and my passionate commitment to and belief in the original contribution I could make to it. Looking back, I realize now that the opportunity to teach the texts I examined in my dissertation really afforded me the time and space to think through them in a variety of ways, and I am grateful to the department administrative faculty and staff who approved and made those courses possible. At Cornell University, I am grateful to Brenda J. Marston, Curator of the Human Sexuality Collection and Head of Research Services in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at Kroch Library. Her belief in this work and a Zwickler Fellowship at the HSC enabled the archival research that eventually comprised chapter two. Additionally, an aside suggestion from her provided the inspiration for my next project and my editorial relationship with Amy Stone at Trinity University. I am honored to be the youngest of a long history of strong, southern women from ! v my family. My Mawmaw, my mother, and my sister raised me; Kelly spoils me still. They are my strongest allies, my loyal protectors, and my unconditional champions. Thank you for reminding me to be brave. I could not have done this without the other women in my life who I have loved: Kirsten Peltier, founder of my life committee and still, to this day, the most capable woman I have ever known; Erica Titkemeyer, preserver of seashells and buckeyes, collector of wishful pennies and eyelashes; and Lizeth Martinez, who taught me to believe the word hermosa. If we’d had three hearts like an octopus, could we have loved more fearlessly, more fiercely? ! ! ! vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………iv LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………………..viii ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………...ix INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...1 CHAPTERS ONE READING LESBIAN HYPERVISIBILITY…………………………….30 TWO SUBSCRIBE TO FEMINARY! PRODUCING ARCHIVE AND COMMUNITY…………………………………………………………..62 THREE PUT A TASTE OF THE SOUTH IN YOUR MOUTH: CARNAL APPETITES AND INTERSEXTIONALITY…………………………...90 FOUR COMING OUT AND TUTOR TEXT PERFORMANCE IN JANE CHAMBERS’ LESBI-DRAMAS………………………….……..…….125 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………171 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………180 VITA……………………………………………………………………………………188 ! vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 from Feminary 8.2 (1977): Front cover……………………………………...78 Figure 2.2 Members of the Feminary Collective 12.1 (1982): 4……………….………..81 Figure 2.3 from Feminary 11.1&2 (1980): 132……………………………………...…..84 Figure 3.1 from Feminary 12.1 (1982): 62………………………………………………96 Figure 4.1 A handbill from the original 1974 production of A Late Snow, produced by Playwrights Horizons, at the NYC Clark Center………………………………...….145 Figure 4.2 Jean Smart as Lil and Aphroditi Kolaitis as Annie in a 1981The Glines (NYC) production of Jane Chambers’ Last Summer at Bluefish Cove…………………156 ! ! viii ABSTRACT Southern Sapphisms: Sexuality and Sociality in Literary Productions, 1974-1997, considers how queer and feminist theories illuminate and complicate the intersections between canonical and obscure, queer and normative, and regional and national narratives in southern literary representations produced during a crucial but understudied period in the historical politicization of sexuality. The advent of New Southern Studies— and its nascent emphasis on sexuality as an organizing principle of social relations—has focused almost exclusively on midcentury texts from the Southern Renascence, largely neglecting post-1970 queer literatures. At the same time, despite these developments in southern studies, most scholarship in women’s and feminist studies continue to ignore the South, or worse, demonize the South as backward, parochial, and deeply homophobic. My dissertation redresses these scholarly lacunae with the first book-length study devoted to southern lesbian literary productions across multiple genres, including fiction, small press newspapers, poetry, plays, and cinematic representations. Analyzing works by some of the most prominent names in American women’s writing and feminist politics since the 1970s, including Dorothy Allison, Blanche McCrary Boyd, Jane Chambers, Doris Davenport, Fannie Flagg, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Shay Youngblood, and the editors of Feminary, this project argues that late twentieth-century southern lesbian writings not only reveal, but also worked at the cutting edge to drive virtually all the major shifts in the discourses and theoretical underpinnings of sexuality studies and in lesbian and gay politics and culture in the nation. Many of the women fighting on the national level for women’s liberation and what we now call LGBTQ rights have either hailed from the ! ix South, spent long periods of their lives in the South, or settled in the South. Through both surface and close reading techniques, Southern Sapphisms argues that we cannot understand expressions of lesbianism and feminism in post-Stonewall era American literature without also understanding the explicitly southern dynamics of those writings— foregrounding the centrality of sexuality to the study of southern literature as well as the region’s defining role in the historiography of lesbian literature in the United States. ! ! ! x INTRODUCTION In the 1970s, a generation of writers came of age in the Women’s Liberation and Gay Liberation movements—but what many activists and scholars fail to notice is that a significant number of women on the cutting edge of these social advancements were not only from the South, but were also emphatically southern in their writing and thinking. These women forged a legacy of rich and varied literary productions spanning