Forming Queerness: Experimental Forms and Queer Lineage in Post-Stonewall American Literature

Forming Queerness: Experimental Forms and Queer Lineage in Post-Stonewall American Literature explores three major figures of late 20th century American literature and their impact on the representation of LGBTQ+ art and culture: Audre Lorde, Robert Chesley, and Andrea Lawlor. By centering these figures as integral to the conditions of queer representation in American art, this dissertation animates writing following the Stonewall Riots of 1969, an event which marked a significant change for LGBTQ+ liberation movements, making the efforts of queer activists publicly visible and more urgent than ever. Not only did the Riots spark interest and public scrutiny of the movement, it also fundamentally reshaped the landscape of queer artistic output. The art produced in the years following the Riots marked a transformative moment for queer literary expression because they invited interrogation of the socio-cultural and political efficacies of queer art and culture. In many ways, the work produced in the years following Stonewall not only engaged new models of queer life and possibility but also contended with the rise of Feminist, Gender, and Queer theories that were proliferating in academic communities. My dissertation argues that writers engaged with form to imagine not only new literary possibilities but more explicitly interrogated how these new forms challenge heteronormative and conscriptive assumptions for queer expression.