"Fascinating in its account of famous Lesbians throughout the years, analyzing the books they wrote, their efforts to achieve publication and their lives with other Lesbians. Ranging from the Biblical Ruth and Sappho through creative works in all languages of Western Europe (Italian, French, German, Spanish, English, and Portuguese), Jeanette Howard Foster analyzes poetry, drama and fiction for all reference to Lesbians and Lesbianism. A lengthy section discusses such famous women as the Ladies of Llangollen, Emily Dickinson, Louise Labe, Margaret Fuller, George Sand, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Adah Isaacs Menken, and "Michael Field." Another section includes analysis of the vital works of the renaissance of Lesbian literature from 1900 through mid-twentieth century that laid the groundwork for today's burgeoning Lesbian literary world including Kay Boyle, Djuna Barnes, Renee Vivien, Natalie Clifford Barney, Virginia Woolf, Isak Dinesen, Colette, Vita Sackville-West, Radclyffe Hall, Dorothy Richardson, Henry Handel Richardson, Christa Winsloe, Frances Brett Young, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Baker, Helen R. Hull, Rosamond Lehmann, Shirley Jackson, Katherine Mansfield and others too numerous to mention."--Publisher's description.

A stunning biography of the long-neglected, firebrand author of the "bible of lesbian literature," Jeannette Howard Foster

Jeannette Howard Foster was to lesbianism in the mid-twentieth century what out authors such as Gore Vidal and James Baldwin were to gay men. She unapologetically blew the lid off Cold War sexual repression in 1956 with her Sex Variant Women in Literature-the first-ever study of homosexual, bisexual, and cross-dressing characters appearing in more than 300 works, from ancient times to the present. Joanne Passet's Sex Variant Woman is a fascinating portrait of Foster, who served as the first librarian at the Kinsey Institute before leaving to publish her controversial book. It is also a riveting look into the pre-Stonewall past, the intense sexual repression and persecution endured by homosexuals, the groundbreaking advances put forth by a cadre of activists, and the rise of feminism and gay and lesbian liberation decades later.

It's obvious why only men develop prostate cancer and why only women get ovarian cancer. But it is not obvious why women are more likely to recover language ability after a stroke than men or why women are more apt to develop autoimmune diseases such as lupus. Sex differences in health throughout the lifespan have been documented. Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health begins to snap the pieces of the puzzle into place so that this knowledge can be used to improve health for both sexes. From behavior and cognition to metabolism and response to chemicals and infectious organisms, this book explores the health impact of sex (being male or female, according to reproductive organs and chromosomes) and gender (one's sense of self as male or female in society). Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health discusses basic biochemical differences in the cells of males and females and health variability between the sexes from conception throughout life. The book identifies key research needs and opportunities and addresses barriers to research. Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health will be important to health policy makers, basic, applied, and clinical researchers, educators, providers, and journalists-while being very accessible to interested lay readers.

This book analyses twentieth-century writers who traffic in queer, non-normative, and/or fluid gender and sexual identities and subversive practices, revealing how gender and sexually variant women create, revise, redefine, and play with language, desires, roles, the body, and identity. Through the model of the "switch" —someone who shifts between roles, desires, or ways of being in the realms of gender or sexual identity – Gender and Sexual Fluidity in 20th Century Women Writers: Switching Desire and Identity examines the intersecting locations of gender and sexual identity switching that six prolific, experimental authors and their narratives play with: Gertrude Stein, Jeanette Winterson, Kathy Acker, Eileen Myles, Anne Carson, and Anne Carson’s translations of Sappho. The theory and identities revealed create and give space to—by their playful, exploratory, and destabilizing nature—diverse openings and possibilities for a great expansion and freedom in gender, sexuality, desires, roles, practices, and identity. This is a provocative and innovative intervention in gender and sexuality in modern literature and gives us a new vocabulary and conversation by which to expand women’s and gender studies, LGBTQ and sexuality studies, identity studies, literature, feminist theory, and queer theory.