Since the late 1980s, queer studies and theory have become vital to the intellectual and political life of the United States. This has been due, in no small degree, to the influence of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's critically acclaimed "Epistemology of the Closet". Working from classic texts of European and American writers - including Melville, James, Nietzsche, Proust, and Wilde -Sedgwick analyzes a turn-of-the-century historical moment in which sexual orientation became as important a demarcation of personhood as gender had been for centuries. In her preface to this updated edition Sedgwick places the book both personally and historically, looking specifically at the horror of the first wave of the AIDS epidemic and its influence on the text.
- ISBN10 0520254066
- ISBN13 9780520254060
- Publish Date 17 January 2008 (first published 16 October 1990)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of California Press
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 280
- Language English