While careful to point out the differences between the public reigns of terror that led to many lynchings and the rarer instances of the murder of one woman by another privately motivated woman, Duggan asserts that dominant versions of both sets of stories contributed to the marginalization of African Americans and women while solidifying a distinctly white, male, heterosexual form of American citizenship.
Wells) Duggan reveals how stories of sex and violence were crucial to the development of American modernity. Situating this story alongside simultaneously circulating lynching narratives (and its resistant versions, such as those of Memphis antilynching activist Ida B. mass culture and shows how newly “modern” notions of normality and morality that arose from such cases still haunt and distort lesbian and gay politics to the present day. Lisa Duggan locates in this sensationalized event the emergence of the lesbian in U.S. Local, national, and international newspapers, medical and scientific publications, and popular fiction writers all clamored to cover the ensuing “girl lovers” murder trial. Her most recent book, Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed, takes up Rand's philosophy of selfishness, the influence of her novels via her cruel, surly, sexy heroes, and the way her work has endured as a reference point for mainstream political figures.On a winter day in 1892, in the broad daylight of downtown Memphis, Tennessee, a middle class woman named Alice Mitchell slashed the throat of her lover, Freda Ward, killing her instantly. Her books include The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy, Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and National Interest (co-edited with Lauren Berlant), Sapphic Slashers: Sex, Violence, and American Modernity, and Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture (co-authored with Nan Hunter). cultural, social, and political history, and the history of gender and sexuality.
Professor Duggan served as President of the American Studies Association (2014-2015) and has written extensively about modern U.S. Lisa Duggan is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University.
Lisa Duggan's Distinguished Lecture in History & Literature will take place on Thursday, October 3 at 6 pm in Barker 110.
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