Lesbian Themes Research Articles

The Portrait of Jasmine’s Behavior and Personality Structure in “Below Her Mouth” Movie

The purpose of this study was to analyze the personality structure of Jasmine's behavior in Below Her Mouth movie. With this research, it is hoped that the adolescent generation, in particular, can be wiser and more selective in choosing associations and can limit things that can affect their lives in the future, especially from the environment and friendships. This research uses qualitative methods. The object used in this study is a film with a lesbian theme, namely the film Below Her Mouth. The data collected is obtained from the results of watching the film and sorting out the scenes and dialogues in the film. The results showed that Jasmine's behavior in the film Below Her Mouth is influenced by the personality structure dominated by the id structure, Jasmine's cause of eventually becoming a lesbian is influenced by internal and external factors where masculinity and seduction are part of external factors then sexual attraction and youth experiences are part of internal factors

Resistance to Lesbian Erasure: Celie’s Self-discovery Through Lesbianism in The Color Purple

This paper examines the theme of lesbianism in Alice Walker’s groundbreaking novel The Color Purple through a nuanced interpretation of the relationship between Celie and Shug, contending that their connection transcends mere friendship or sisterhood and represents a significant manifestation of lesbianism. It substantiates the individual meaning of the lesbian experience, which is not only a survival mechanism for Celie, who exists as the “other” to live in a world dominated by whites and males, but also a catalyst for her personal growth, self-discovery, and empowerment. Furthermore, it also analyzes how Walker’s descriptions of Celie’s lesbian love break the silence of lesbian erasure based on the salvific wish imposed on lesbian women within the black community and deconstruct “unnatural” lesbianism under heteronormality. By shedding light on the overlooked significance of lesbian relationships, this study offers insights into the experiences of marginalized black women, enriching the understanding of The Color Purple.

Feminism Represented in Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion

The Passion is a novel written by a modern British feminist writer of the 20th century, Jeanette Winterson in 1987. She concerns with lesbian themes, gender, and sexuality in her works. This study aims to show the contribution of representation theory promoted by Stuart Hall in literary studies. The study utilized the concept of feminism proposed by Beauvoir as the foundation for data analysis to strengthen the argument. Data analysis shows that this novel expresses the spirit of feminism, namely 1) the resistance to the objectification of women, 2) the rejection of women's subordination, and 3) the support of cultural feminism. The analysis of the text narrative and the contextual background of the novel and the writer, the study showcased the ideological position of the writer

1933: the year of lesbian modernism in Poland?

ABSTRACT This article makes the first attempt at the reconstruction of lesbian modernism within local and transnational modernist networks in Poland. It covers a brief span of 1933, the extraordinary year that witnessed the publication of three novels with lesbian and sapphic themes: Radclyffe Hall’s Źródło samotności (the translation of The Well of Loneliness) with Irena Krzywicka’s preface, Maria Modrakowska’s Anetka, and Aniela Gruszecka’s Przygoda w nieznanym kraju. On the basis of these works and archival research, the article argues that these novels contributed to the lesbian fiction which emerged in Polish literature sixty years earlier than the widely accepted 1990s.

Rethinking the Boundary Between Human and Nonhuman: Jeanette Winterson’s <i>The stone gods</i> as a Transgression Experiment

As a world-famous writer, Jeanette Winterson, as well as her novels, have been well-known for her lesbian theme and love theme. Little attention has been paid to the theme of transgression. However, studies have shown that transgression experiment is also the key theme through all of the novels by Jeanette Winterson. In the Stone Gods, she still keeps this narrative style and gives an attempt to stir the people to re-evaluate the boundary between human and nonhuman, attracting much more attention to the issues of transgression experiment and the result after transgression. In this paper, based on the Jenks’ theory of transgression, we found out that there are two ways that (1) broadening the definition of body;(2) breaking the boundary between human and environment, which could be accepted to attempt to explore the issues of boundary between human and nonhuman to examine whether the boundary could be crossed in The Stone Gods. In these ways, it is found out that the real aim when Winterson regards the novel as a transgression experiment is to not merely break a rule, rebel against normative social and cultural constraints, but rather lead a dynamic trend in cultural production and diverse discourse, in order to stimulate readers to have dynamic thought about everything.

Invisible Sculpture, Latent Violence, and Monumental Parody in Mädchen in Uniform

According to Robert Musil, the modern monument is characterized by invisibility. Remediated in film, monuments have tended to recede still further from critics’ and viewers’ attention. A similar vanishing act appears to have happened to the sculptural opening sequence of Leontine Sagan’s Mädchen in Uniform, whose audiences and critics have been primarily focused on the film’s groundbreaking lesbian theme. This article looks at, rather than past, the Prussian monuments that populate German film from the 1920s onwards and that are a pervasive presence in Sagan’s film. As a counterpoint to these hyper-virile sculptures, it also considers the counter-monumentality of sculpture by women during the Weimar Republic, notably by the film’s screenplay author, Christa Winsloe, and the parodic deployment of statues as they enter interior spaces in the film.

Historical Books

Historical Books Rhiannon Graybill and Christopher T. Begg 2062. [Judges 16] Caroline Blyth, Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale: The Lost Seduction (LHB/OTS 652; London/Oxford/New York/New Delhi/Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2017). Pp. x + 198. $114. ISBN 978-0-567-6-7312-1. B. offers a comprehensive exploration of Delilah vis-à-vis the figure of the femme fatale. First, B. introduces the femme fatale as a cultural trope and traces iterations in art, literature, and film in the nineteenth century Fin de Siècle, the hardboiled noir of the 1920s–1950s, and late twentieth century neo-noir. Next, B. provides an overview of biblical scholarship on Delilah, with particular emphasis on sex and death, as well as the story’s “gaps” that interpreters fill. Her account of the scholarly “afterlives” of the biblical character is followed by a study of her cultural “afterlives” in art, film, and literature. B. also explores in detail the relationship between Samson and Delilah and two modern femme fatale stories: Raymond Chandler’s novel Farewell my Lovely (1940) and an episode from the BBC series Sherlock entitled “A Scandal in Belgravia” (2012).—R.G. [End Page 721] 2063. [Ruth] Stephanie Day Powell, Narrative Desire and the Book of Ruth (LHBOTS 662; London/Oxford/New York/New Delhi/Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2018). Pp. xii + 201 + illus. $118, £85. ISBN 978-0-5676-7875-1. P. presents a reading of the Book of Ruth that explores the workings of “narrative desire” (a phrase used by her to describe the desire of both readers and writers. She focuses in particular on “woman-identified” desire, a category roughly akin to “lesbian.” After introducing theoretical work on narrative desire drawn from psychoanalysis, literary criticism, and feminist criticism, P. offers a close reading of the Ruth story that draws out its many productive ambiguities. She then reads the biblical story with and against three modern works with lesbian themes: Fannie Flagg’s novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe (and the film version, Fried Green Tomatoes), Jeanette Winterson’s novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and Amos Gitaï’s film Golem, The Spirit of Exile. Deryn Guest’s work on lesbian biblical hermeneutics (e.g., When Deborah Met Jael: Lesbian Biblical Hermeneutics [London: SCM, 2005]) is also a major influence.—R.G. 2064. [2 Samuel 22] Magdalena Lass, … zum Kampf mit Kraft umgürtet: Untersuchungen zu 2 Sam 22 unter gewalthermeneutischen Perspektiven (BBB 185; Göttingen: V & R Unipress/Bonn University Press, 2018). Pp. 410. €55. ISBN 978-3-8471-0816-0. This monograph on 2 Samuel 22 originated as L.’s 2015 dissertation at the “Private University” in Linz, Austria (Susanne Gillmayr-Bucher, director). The text that is its focus, a celebratory poem attributed to David that has a largely verbatim parallel in Psalm 18, features divine and human violence to a disturbingly marked degree. Accordingly, L. concentrates on this aspect of the passage in her treatment of this. In so doing, she devotes three initial chapters to a consideration, respectively, of violence in the Bible overall, the range of hermeneutical strategies for dealing with this phenomenon, and perspectives on violence in the social sciences. On this basis, she then turns to the textual analysis of 2 Samuel 22 itself, here paying particular attention to how it represents, in its terminology and thematic unfolding, the violence of both the divine and human protagonists as this is brought to bear on their common “enemies.” A brief summation of L.’s findings and reflections on these concludes the work. Overall, L. advocates a differentiated approach to a text like 2 Samuel 22 in which the passage is not simply excluded from the prayer life of the church and of individual Christians, but is rather allowed to function as a source of reflection on our image of God and the reality of violence around and inside all of us, even as it needs to be clearly recognized that the violence literarily portrayed in the text is not meant for “real world” emulation/imitation by any of its hearers or readers.—C.T.B. 2065. [1 Kings 16–2 Kings 10] Paulo...

The Gender Trouble and Body Narrative in Jeanette Winterson’s Novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruits

As one of “the 20 Best of Young British Writers” coined by the famous literary magazine Grant , Jeanette Winterson has been well-known for her lesbian themes. Her semi-autobiographical novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruits is the most controversial one. In this novel, Winterson deconstruct the binary opposition system dominated in the heterosexual world, reconstructed a liberated view on love in the homosexual world and presented her strong feminist thoughts through the exploration of the gender troubles. In examining these issues, the novel presents body as the object, content and medium of narration, and explores body narratives in constructing alternative views on love and gender.

Screenings

FQ Columnist Paul Julian Smith traces the changes in queer Mexican cinema since the 1990s and asks: What does it mean for a film to be both queer and mainstream? Recent Mexican features with lesbian, gay, and trans themes pose this question. They are audience-friendly genre movies, either romantic comedies or thrillers, naturalistic in style, apolitical in attitude, and commercially produced in the hope of exhibition in theaters. Reaching out through social media to a queer community of viewers, they also seek to connect closely with their audience. Smith suggests that a new corpus of queer films is emerging that may be premature in rejecting the political and artistic radicalism of earlier Mexican queer cinema. The great virtue of these new queer films, however, is that they aim to connect with an audience beyond the art house that needs—in these changing, challenging times—to see this newly visible community represented on the big screen.

Rapunzel Loves Merida: Melodramatic Expressions of Lesbian Girlhood and Teen Romance in Tangled, Brave, and Femslash

This article explores the melodramatic expression of lesbian girlhood and teen romance in Disney's Tangled (2010) and Disney Pixar's Brave (2012), as well as “Meripunzel” femslash, fan-authored romantic pairings of the animations' female protagonists. First, Anne Sexton's poem, “Rapunzel,” offers a literary precedent for exploring lesbian themes in the fairy tale. The next section shows how Tangled and Brave invoke the narrative conventions of the family melodrama. This generic association reveals the films' uses of rhetoric familiar to youth coming-out narratives, as well as other visual and aural coding suggestive of queer styles. The last section shows how Meripunzel femslash taps into the films' existing melodramatic narrative forms and visual aesthetics, rehearsing their coming-out rhetoric while addressing the pleasures of and problems facing lesbian teen romance. I conclude by problematizing the often conventional expressions of lesbian girlhood in femslash, ultimately arguing for their empowering potential, especially as they indicate revised definitions of “princess.”

Exploring queer pedagogies in the college-level YA literature course

ABSTRACTOne place to start understanding how pre-service teachers learn about contemporary young adult (YA) literature, especially those works that feature lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning (LGBTQ) and gender identity themes and characters, is through an examination of the YA literature course – a course many pre-service teachers take as part of their teacher certification programs in the USA. In this article, I turn to queer pedagogy to explore the syllabi of 67 college-level YA literature courses in order to address the question: ‘How do young adult literature courses incorporate the growing body of high-quality young adult literature that features LGBTQ and gender variant themes and characters?’ Findings include how the YA literature field might be normalizing, or standardizing through repeated approaches, what it means to teach a text and in turn shape future teachers’ decisions on how a text is incorporated into a curriculum.

THE INFLUENCE OF GENETIC FACTORS ON MORAL AND LEGAL JUDGMENT OF HOMOSEXUALITY

The effect of genetic factors in human sciences, especially moral and legal judgment based on the theme of homosexuality and lesbianism in the field of genetic research is concerned. The basis of this review, the acceptance of same-sex attraction has been the influence of genetic factors. The impact of the issue and the verdict was a new issue, a new look and a new study is based on a combination of anthropology research needs. After expressing moral judgment and jurisprudential issue recommendations for better implementation of the current space provided.

Okinawan Peruvian Poet’s Gender Performativity: On “Diario de la mujer es ponja” by Doris Moromisato

Okinawan Peruvian Poet’s Gender Performativity: On “Diario de la mujer es ponja” by Doris Moromisato Shigeko Mato (bio) Shigeko Mato Waseda University, Tokyo Shigeko Mato Shigeko Mato received her Ph.D in Spanish American literature from the University of New Mexico. She is Associate Porfessor of Latin American Literature and Culture and Spanish Language at School of International Liberal Studies, Waseda University, Tokyo. Her articles on contemporary Japanese Peruvian literature and Mexican literature have appeared in Hispanófila, Confluencia, and other journals. She is also the author of Cooptation, Complicity, and Representation: Desire and Limits for Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century Mexican Fiction (2010). Endnotes 1. The painting on which Juan Kanashiro Iparraguirre bases his could be one of Utamaro’s many that depict a woman sitting in front of a mirror, either putting white powder to her neck or fixing her hair or makeup (Asano). As in Utamaro’s paintings, in Moromisato’s Diario’s covers, the viewer also sees the woman’s face reflected in the mirror and her long neck from the back. 2. “Esponja” in Spanish (sponge in English) has the connotation of a person who has a great faculty for absorbing information, according to Real Academia Española. Debbie Lee-DiStefano also interprets the meaning of sponge as a woman “capable of soaking up her surroundings, of absorbing any information” (48) 3. Derrida, elaborating on J. L. Austin’s concept of “performative utterances,” delineates that it is the citationality and iterability of every sign (spoken or written) that first “do things” or make it possible for a sign to produce certain effects and actions (by repeating), yet it is also the citationality and iterability that make the effects and actions of a sign unidentifiable, incomprehensible, and invalid within any given context (by altering), “engendering] infinitely new contexts in an absolutely nonsaturable fashion” (320). Butler, also adapting Austin’s concept of “performative utterances,” applies this notion of citationality and iterability of performativity to her study of the construction of gender and sex. For her more detailed analysis of Austin’s performativity of speech acts, see the introduction of Bulter’s Excitable Speech, in which she examines how “injurious speech” (“hate speech”) functions both as “the deed that [utterance] effects” and “certain effects that are not the same as the speech act itself” (3). 4. Butler states “the question is no longer, How is gender constituted as and through a certain interpretation of sex? (a question that leaves the “matter” of sex untheorized), but rather, Through what regulatory norms is sex itself materialized? And how is it that treating the materiality of sex as a given presupposes and consolidates that normative conditions of its own emergence?” (xviii–xix). 5. Paracelsus (1493–1541 b. in Einsiedeln, Switzerland) was a 16th century physician, alchemist, and botanist who invented new chemical treatments for illnesses and wounds (such as use of laudanum and mercury for syphilis) (Norden). 6. See p. 1–2 of this study. 7. I first found this quote in Carmen Tisnado’s study on four South American short stories with lesbian themes (278) and then examined Butler’s original study. Works Cited Asano, Shugo. Kitagawa Utamaro. Tokyo: Shincho Nippon Bijutsu Bunko, 1997. Google Scholar Balderston, Daniel and José Maristany. “The Lesbian and Gay Novel in Latin America.” The Cambridge Companion to the Latin American Novel. ed. Efraín Kristal. Cambrdige, England: Cambridge UP, 2005. 200–16. Google Scholar Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge Classics, 2006. Google Scholar Butler, Judith. “Imitation and Gender Insubordination.” The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. Ed. Henry Abelove, Michèle Anina Barale, and David M. Halperin. New York: Routledge, 1993.307–20. Google Scholar Butler, Judith. “Introduction.” Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” London: Routledge Classics, 2011. xi–xxx. Google Scholar Butler, Judith. “Introduction: On Linguistic Vulnerability.” Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge, 1997.1–41. Google Scholar Derrida, Jacques. “Signature Event Context.” Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982.307–30. Google Scholar “Esponja.” Diccionario de la lengua española. 22 ed. 2001. Real Academia Española. Web. 1 Feb. 2012. Google...

‘Even if you aren’t Swedish, even if you aren’t lesbian’: Show Me Love in Queer American Context

Concentrating on the film's reception in the United States, this article analyses _Fucking Åmål_ (_Show Me Love_, 1998) according to its status as a foreign film . The film's two main themes, lesbian love story and small-town boredom, are explored, as well as the film 's connection to the genres of romantic comedy and the American teen movie. Applying queer theory I assert that the lesbian theme is central to _Show Me Love_, where the narrative's acknowledgement and acceptance of the main characters' queer identity transcends traditional gender roles and drives the transformation of heteronormative space and community into queer space and community. The tendency of critics to downplay or disregard the lesbian theme while emphasizing the film's representation of small-town boredom and focusing on the film's coming-of-age story ignores the radical transformative power of queer acceptance and acknowledgement in general discourse. In my analysis I question the ethical and societal consequences of such readings, exploring the discourse surrounding _Show Me Love_ since its release in the United States and asking why it matters to read _Show Me Love_ as the lesbian representation it truly is.

Teachers Working Cooperatively with Parents and Caregivers when Implementing LGBT Themes in the Elementary Classroom

Many teachers are interested in having a more inclusive multicultural education that includes lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) themes and gay-themed children's literature; unfortunately, research has found that many teachers do not implement gay themes in their multicultural education curriculum because of fear of criticism from parents and administrators, lack of professional training, and their own negative attitudes. Moreover, the most common topic that surfaces during teacher discussions are concerns over parental objections. This article will detail techniques and strategies when implementing LBGT themes and gay-themed children's literature in the classroom and how to deal positively, cooperatively, and proactively with parents and caregivers.

Maurice Echeverría’s Labios: A Disenchanted Story about Lesbians in Guatemala’s Postwar Reality

Maurice Echeverría’s Labios: A Disenchanted Story about Lesbians in Guatemala’s Postwar Reality

Toward a More Inclusive Multicultural Education: Methods for Including LGBT Themes in K-12 Classrooms

Although multicultural education scholars and the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) have encouraged the implementation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender themes in the classroom (NAME, 2005), many classroom educators look the other way because of fear, retaliation, or personal discomfort. The following article will provide some basic background on the topic of sexual orientation in the multicultural education classroom and provide some strategies for implementation.

New Girls and Bandit Brides: Female Narcissism and Lesbian Desire in Margaret Fuller's <em>Summer on the Lakes</em>

New Girls and Bandit Brides: Female Narcissism and Lesbian Desire in Margaret Fuller’s Summer on the Lakes David Greven In July 1843, Margaret Fuller published her essay “The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Men. Woman versus Women” in the Dial, the major transcendentalist magazine, of which she was one of the editors; she later expanded it for publication in book form in 1845 with its title changed to Woman in the Nineteenth Century. During the period between publishing “The Great Lawsuit” and Woman, Fuller traveled to Niagara and the Great Lakes. The work that emerged from this trip, Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, published in 1844, has been regarded as one of this author’s most significant. In this essay, I argue that what makes the book particularly interesting to studies of gender and sexuality in the period is the light it sheds on her awareness of same-sex desire and its relationship to antebellum gender politics. In Summer’s Mariana narrative, Fuller links her critique of constrictive gender roles and their dynamics to the experience and implications of same-sex desire within a female homosocial environment; the play between collective gender identity and singular queerness provides the central drama of this narrative. From the prevailing critical perspective shaped by the theories of the French social historian Michel Foucault in his influential History of Sexuality, there has been a long-standing view, only recently challenged, that modern sexual identities such as lesbian and homosexual are a late-nineteenth-century invention, the result of the creation of new taxonomies of sexual identity that date from the 1860s and the subsequent rise of sexological and related legal discourses (43, 15–51). Writing in the wake of Carroll Smith-Rosenberg’s early study of intensely passionate female friendships, “The Female World of Love and Ritual,” many scholars have disputed or at least deemphasized, as Smith-Rosenberg did, the erotic nature of these female friendships in early America, [End Page 37] arguing that what appears to contemporary readers as erotic passion was the conventional language of nineteenth-century friendship and other forms of platonic love. New waves of scholars, however, have been challenging such positions. Of specific relevance to this essay, several scholars have argued for the presence of eroticism between women and even for the legitimacy of using the term lesbian in texts prior to the late-nineteenth-century era.1 Within the growing field of Fuller scholarship, the question of same-sex desire has drawn increasing attention in the past two decades. Mary E. Wood writes persuasively about Fuller’s specifically lesbian themes: “By looking for lesbian positionality in the writings of Margaret Fuller in the light of the discourse on sexuality of a specific historical period and social context,” she argues, “we can begin to see that notions of lesbian ‘identity’ were already being constructed . . . well before sexologists named lesbianism as medically deviant in the 1880s” (4). Claudia Card discusses the lesbian significance of Fuller’s work as one that lies in its thematic and textual diversity (60–61), and Jeffrey Steele argues, as well, that Fuller explored homoerotic feelings in her work (66). In her essay “Essential, Portable, Mythical Margaret Fuller,” Mary Loeffelholz argues for the as yet unimagined possibilities that recognizing Fuller as a lesbian writer might mean for periodizing and anthologizing nineteenth-century women writers. Nicole Tonkovich also analyzes lesbian themes in the Mariana episode in Domesticity with a Difference (175–77, 185, 199–200). Given the important work from several critics on the subject of Fuller’s lesbian themes, then, it is surprising that Summer on the Lakes has not been reexamined in this light. As Meg McGavran Murray describes in her biography of the author, Fuller underwent a crisis of gender and sexual identity in 1839 and 1840, a period in which she was besieged by conflicting feelings toward other women (31). Summer is a crucial text for the question of same-sex desire in Fuller’s work, reflective of her personal struggles but also of her dynamic attempts to make sense of them. Because Summer is so resonant in these terms, it is also relevant to the contested issue of same-sex desire in...

Subversion of Subjugation: A Reading of Manju Kapur's Novel ‘A Married Woman’

This article aims at depicting female embodiment as the key site of political, social, cultural and economic forces. It illustrates that Manju Kapur, as a modern woman writer, gives relevance to the female body in her writings. Through the reversal of the dominant male gaze and by moving the female body from the margin of the page to the centre of the text, Kapur destabilises binary oppositions that are the root cause of oppression against women. She uses the deconstruction method of ideological critique to comment on patriarchal thoughts and institutions. A female is still viewed as a body, and both her body and sexuality are controlled by men. Manju Kapur takes up the theme of lesbianism to show that in modern times the power equation and ideology are re-defined and patriarchy is questioned. Women obsessed with social victimhood are craving for sexual autonomy. Women are challenging heterosexuality to re-draw the patriarchal map. The author theorises women's resistance and proves that women are capable of engendering subjective and emancipatory epiphanies. The novel ‘A Married Woman’ redefines the idea of ‘new woman’.

“Many Have Loved You with Lips and Fingers”

Sapphistries covers fortytwo thousand years of world history with the panache of a swashbuckling, feminist lothario. Leila J. Rupp packs her ambitious project into 233 pages, augmented by footnotes and an extensive bibliography. Sapphistries is a worldwide tour of love between women in locations as disparate as India, Germany, Japan, Nigeria, Malaysia, and Sudan. From these global travels and an expansive time frame emerges a wellwritten and engaging synthetic history. Throughout Sapphistries, Rupp delights in historical attention to detail while savoring the literary; each page is punctuated with beautiful language, imagery, and flights of intellectual fancy. Imagining a past that includes love between women is a persistent theme in writing by lesbians. From the Sapphic poems of Michael Field to Judy Grahn’s Another Mother Tongue, from Jeannette Howard Foster’s work in the literary archive to identify lesbian characters and lesbian themes to articles in small press publications like the Furies’s celebration of Sweden’s Queen Christina as a lesbian foremother, lesbians have researched, written, and imagined history.1 Rupp eschews a universalizing impulse that characterizes some of the prior lesbian forays into history and instead transforms the desire for a long history and for a history not tied to geography into a trenchant and rigorous historical narrative. She mobilizes contemporary theory and historical scholarship to narrate her history. At the center of Sapphistries is the synthesis of historical scholarship from disparate sources. When the historical record is oblique on the subject of love between women, Rupp uses contemporary literary texts such as Jackie Kay’s Trumpet,