Love and the Politics of Intimacy

Stanislava Dikova is MHRA Research Associate in Humanities at Keele University, UK, and Visiting Fellow in Literature, Film and Theatre Studies at University of Essex, UK.Wendy McMahon is Senior Lecturer in American Studies (Literatures and Cultures) at University of East Anglia, UK.Jordan Savage is Lecturer in United States Literature at University of Essex, UK.

This collection offers an excellent overview of current concerns and themes in research into love and relationships from the perspectives of literature, cultural studies and activism. It thereby provides readers and scholars with opportunities to follow some of these leads in order to discover further productive entanglements of emotion, intimacy and social structures.

• List of FiguresNotes on ContributorsPrefaceAcknowledgements IntroductionStanislava Dikova, University of Essex, UK; Wendy McMahon, University of East Anglia, UK; and Jordan Savage, University of Essex, UKPart 1: Love and communities1. ‘Love is a battle, love is a war’: James Baldwin’s use of love to represent race, gender and sexuality in segregated AmericaDaniele Nunziata, University of Oxford, UK 2. Liberating the Victorian politics of love through Jack the Lass and Anne ListerVicky Panossian and Salma Yassine, Central European University, Austria3. The lover and the tribeIan Davidson, University College Dublin, Ireland4. A love letter to white friendsDeya Mukherjee, Independent Scholar, UKPart 2: Intimate bodies 5. The sharper end of love: When sex is painful, how is intimate love navigated? Reflections from a qualitative study in England and France Hannah Loret, Nottingham Trent University, UK6. Kathy Acker’s voice in Blood and Guts in High School and Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘desiring-machines’Gemma Curto, University of Sheffield, UK7. Digital love: Love through the screen/of the screen Daniel O’Brien, University of Essex, UK8. #BlackLove and dating sites: A South African perspective of cyber-love and cyber-ethics during Covid-19Adelina Mbinjama, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South AfricaPart 3: Love’s boundaries 9. Imploding fireworks: Love and self-knowledge in the contemporary Italian sentimental novelFrancesca Pierini, University of Basel, Switzerland10. Lovespeak, love novels and the onset of modernityGary Kelly, University of Alberta, Canada 11. Love as theoretical object in Marguerite Duras’s writingsCrisia Constantine, Griffith University, Australia 12. Love without objectLauren Edwards, York University, Canada13. Post-humanism and the road to castle FrankissteinLawrence Quill, San Jose State University, USAIndex