Reading as Lesbian, Reading as Trans* and Thinking Intergenerationally

Authors

Katherine Binhammer, University of Alberta Department of English and Film StudiesFollow

Author Biography

Katherine Binhammer is a Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. Her most recent work includes Downward Mobility: The Form of Capital in the Sentimental Novel (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020) and essays on feminist literary history, gender and sexuality in Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature and The De Gruyter Handbook of the British Novel in the Long Eighteenth Century. She is Literary Director of The Orlando Project and is currently co-writing the first volume of the four volume Orlando’s Feminist Literary History of Women’s Writing in the British Isles (under contract, Cambridge University Press).

Abstract

Written from the perspective of a critic who came of age in the queer 1990s, this essay considers the generational difference in understandings of Charlotte Charke as a butch lesbian and a transman. It argues that the history of sexuality demands an intergenerational reading practice because our objects are always engaged in a history of the present.

Keywords

History of sexuality, queer and trans* studies, Charlotte Charke, intergenerational feminism

Recommended Citation

Binhammer, Katherine (2024) "Reading as Lesbian, Reading as Trans* and Thinking Intergenerationally," ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830: Vol.14: Iss.2, Article 21.
http://doi.org/10.5038/2157-7129.14.2.1418
Available at: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/abo/vol14/iss2/21