Siobhan B. Somerville – författare

Queering the Color Line transforms previous understandings of how homosexuality was “invented” as a category of identity in the United States beginning in the late nineteenth century. Analyzing a range of sources, including sexology texts, early cinema, and African American literature, Siobhan B. Somerville argues that the emerging understanding of homosexuality depended on the context of the black/white “color line,” the dominant system of racial distinction during this period. This book thus critiques and revises tendencies to treat race and sexuality as unrelated categories of analysis, showing instead that race has historically been central to the cultural production of homosexuality.At about the same time that the 1896 Supreme Court Plessy v. Ferguson decision hardened the racialized boundary between black and white, prominent trials were drawing the public’s attention to emerging categories of sexual identity. Somerville argues that these concurrent developments were not merely parallel but in fact inextricably interrelated and that the discourses of racial and sexual “deviance” were used to reinforce each other’s terms. She provides original readings of such texts as Havelock Ellis’s late nineteenth-century work on “sexual inversion,” the 1914 film A Florida Enchantment, the novels of Pauline E. Hopkins, James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, and Jean Toomer’s fiction and autobiographical writings, including Cane. Through her analyses of these texts and her archival research, Somerville contributes to the growing body of scholarship that focuses on discovering the intersections of gender, race, and sexuality.Queering the Color Line will have broad appeal across disciplines including African American studies, gay and lesbian studies, literary criticism, cultural studies, cinema studies, and gender studies.

Queering the Color Line transforms previous understandings of how homosexuality was “invented” as a category of identity in the United States beginning in the late nineteenth century. Analyzing a range of sources, including sexology texts, early cinema, and African American literature, Siobhan B. Somerville argues that the emerging understanding of homosexuality depended on the context of the black/white “color line,” the dominant system of racial distinction during this period. This book thus critiques and revises tendencies to treat race and sexuality as unrelated categories of analysis, showing instead that race has historically been central to the cultural production of homosexuality.At about the same time that the 1896 Supreme Court Plessy v. Ferguson decision hardened the racialized boundary between black and white, prominent trials were drawing the public’s attention to emerging categories of sexual identity. Somerville argues that these concurrent developments were not merely parallel but in fact inextricably interrelated and that the discourses of racial and sexual “deviance” were used to reinforce each other’s terms. She provides original readings of such texts as Havelock Ellis’s late nineteenth-century work on “sexual inversion,” the 1914 film A Florida Enchantment, the novels of Pauline E. Hopkins, James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, and Jean Toomer’s fiction and autobiographical writings, including Cane. Through her analyses of these texts and her archival research, Somerville contributes to the growing body of scholarship that focuses on discovering the intersections of gender, race, and sexuality.Queering the Color Line will have broad appeal across disciplines including African American studies, gay and lesbian studies, literary criticism, cultural studies, cinema studies, and gender studies.

This Companion provides a guide to queer inquiry in literary and cultural studies. The essays represent new and emerging areas, including transgender studies, indigenous studies, disability studies, queer of color critique, performance studies, and studies of digital culture.  Rather than being organized around a set of literary texts defined by a particular theme, literary movement, or demographic, this volume foregrounds a queer critical approach that moves across a wide array of literary traditions, genres, historical periods, national contexts, and media. This book traces the intellectual and political emergence of queer studies, addresses relevant critical debates in the field, provides an overview of queer approaches to genres, and explains how queer approaches have transformed understandings of key concepts in multiple fields.

This Companion provides a guide to queer inquiry in literary and cultural studies. The essays represent new and emerging areas, including transgender studies, indigenous studies, disability studies, queer of color critique, performance studies, and studies of digital culture.  Rather than being organized around a set of literary texts defined by a particular theme, literary movement, or demographic, this volume foregrounds a queer critical approach that moves across a wide array of literary traditions, genres, historical periods, national contexts, and media. This book traces the intellectual and political emergence of queer studies, addresses relevant critical debates in the field, provides an overview of queer approaches to genres, and explains how queer approaches have transformed understandings of key concepts in multiple fields.

This Companion provides a guide to queer inquiry in literary and cultural studies. The essays represent new and emerging areas, including transgender studies, indigenous studies, disability studies, queer of color critique, performance studies, and studies of digital culture.  Rather than being organized around a set of literary texts defined by a particular theme, literary movement, or demographic, this volume foregrounds a queer critical approach that moves across a wide array of literary traditions, genres, historical periods, national contexts, and media. This book traces the intellectual and political emergence of queer studies, addresses relevant critical debates in the field, provides an overview of queer approaches to genres, and explains how queer approaches have transformed understandings of key concepts in multiple fields.

This Companion provides a guide to queer inquiry in literary and cultural studies. The essays represent new and emerging areas, including transgender studies, indigenous studies, disability studies, queer of color critique, performance studies, and studies of digital culture.  Rather than being organized around a set of literary texts defined by a particular theme, literary movement, or demographic, this volume foregrounds a queer critical approach that moves across a wide array of literary traditions, genres, historical periods, national contexts, and media. This book traces the intellectual and political emergence of queer studies, addresses relevant critical debates in the field, provides an overview of queer approaches to genres, and explains how queer approaches have transformed understandings of key concepts in multiple fields.

Amid contentious debates about citizenship, borders, and belonging, naturalization tends to stand apart, widely celebrated as the culmination of immigrant narratives and American ideals of liberalism. In Naturalization, Siobhan B. Somerville unsettles this story, showing how the process of citizen-making has historically been embedded in normative assumptions about race, indigeneity, and sexuality that have sustained the US settler colonial project. Tracing an alternative genealogy of naturalization from the eighteenth century through the mid-twentieth, Somerville investigates overlooked stories not only of immigrants but also of Indigenous people, formerly enslaved people of African descent, and inhabitants of US territories, many of whom became US citizens through collective naturalization, often without their consent. Somerville’s interdisciplinary approach to a wide-ranging archive—including federal law, photographs, letters, and memoirs—shows how naturalization has long functioned as both a powerful metaphor and a contradictory material practice at the core of the US settler colonial state.

Amid contentious debates about citizenship, borders, and belonging, naturalization tends to stand apart, widely celebrated as the culmination of immigrant narratives and American ideals of liberalism. In Naturalization, Siobhan B. Somerville unsettles this story, showing how the process of citizen-making has historically been embedded in normative assumptions about race, indigeneity, and sexuality that have sustained the US settler colonial project. Tracing an alternative genealogy of naturalization from the eighteenth century through the mid-twentieth, Somerville investigates overlooked stories not only of immigrants but also of Indigenous people, formerly enslaved people of African descent, and inhabitants of US territories, many of whom became US citizens through collective naturalization, often without their consent. Somerville’s interdisciplinary approach to a wide-ranging archive—including federal law, photographs, letters, and memoirs—shows how naturalization has long functioned as both a powerful metaphor and a contradictory material practice at the core of the US settler colonial state.