Reading for Desire: What Counts as “Queer” in Renaissance Drama?

Christine Varnado, Global Gender Studies, Department of Transnational Studies

Erotic desire saturates early modern English drama, but it has been a challenge to theorize precisely how it is constituted, how we are able to perceive it, and, specifically, how and why some configurations of it may be called “queer.” This talk sheds new light on these questions by moving beyond the common understanding of “queer” as a descriptor for persons or practices, offering a new definition of queerness as a structural quality which inheres in affective and relational modes, and a way to describe desires according to how (not by whom) they are enacted and recognized.

The New Faculty Seminar Series is a brown bag lunch event. Coffee and cookies will be provided.