This LGBTQ History Month, we're highlighting the work of Dr Joan Lubin, an assistant professor of modern and contemporary literature in our Department of English Studies.
Joan's research spans science fiction, the history of the novel, American literature, queer theory, and more.
In a recent talk, she shared some of her ongoing research on sexology, including how one novelist helped lay the foundation for LGBT activists to think of themselves as a group.
She spoke about Radclyffe Hall, a Hampshire-born novelist who wrote a groundbreaking work of lesbian literature, The Well of Loneliness, in 1928.
Hall was a great literary talent, publishing seven novels over the course of her life. This was overshadowed by her public image, including her long-term relationship with Una Troubridge, her cropped haircut and her masculine dress.
But it was the legal controversy surrounding The Well of Loneliness that made her famous. The novel told the story of Stephen Gordon, an English woman from an upper-class family whose parents were expecting a boy and stuck with the name they had already chosen. Stephen falls in love with a woman, but social expectations keep them from living happily.
Hall wrote the novel to raise awareness and acceptance of "sexual inversion"—a term used at the time to describe gender nonconformity. The last line of the novel is "Give us also the right to our existence!"
James Douglas, the editor of The Sunday Express, called it "A book that must be suppressed" for obscenity. After a court battle, a judge ordered the book destroyed, and it wouldn't be published again in England until 1949.
In her talk, Joan said that the novelist’s ideas about gender nonconformity laid the foundation for LGBT activists to think of themselves as a political force.
Joan’s upcoming monograph, Pulp Sexology, explores this further, as she analyses the history of sexology as it shifted focus from individual case studies to groups.
She’s also working on an edited volume of correspondence between two queer science fiction writers.
/prod01/prodbucket01/media/durham-university/central-news-and-events-images/83431-1920X290.jpg)