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Metropolitan Lovers The Homosexuality of Cities Julie Abraham Table of Contents PRESS: Bay Windows inteview		$29.95 cloth/jacket ISBN: 978-0-8166-3818-5
How gay became synonymous with urban—and why it matters for both. From the destruction of Sodom to the selling of Gay Street and from Tales of the City to The L Word, urban life and homosexuality have been made inseparable in Western culture. In this sweeping work, Julie Abraham investigates the evolution of this symbiotic relationship over the past two centuries, tracing how homosexuals have simultaneously become model citizens of the modern city and avatars of the urban. Exploring the lives of prominent gay men and women, literary depictions of gay city life, classic works of urban theory, and the rhetoric of political reformers, Abraham challenges conventional thinking about what it means to be metropolitan and what it means to be queer. She provocatively juxtaposes works from writers such as Balzac and Baudelaire, Henry James and James Baldwin, Walter Benjamin and Jane Jacobs to redefine such familiar urban types as the flaneur, the prostitute, and the drag queen. From Paris, London, and Manchester, to Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco, Abraham deftly maps the connections, the exchanges of meaning, and the transfers of value that inform ideas of homosexuality and the city, ideas that have shaped modern life. Bringing this history to bear on the present, she argues against the commodification of gay urbanites as contemporary signs of city life. While the city and homosexuality have long been associated, Abraham analyzes their convergence with unprecedented insight. In the process, she shows us how the urban and homosexuality have been intertwined and the inescapable consequences—both positive and negative—of this union. “Those of us living in the Twin Cities know just how integral the GLBT community is to a metropolitan center. But, Abraham, Professor of Literature and GLBT Studies at Sarah Lawrence College, clearly and readably develops her theme for those who might not have looked at city life from this perspective.” —Lavender Julie Abraham is professor of LGBT Studies at Sarah Lawrence College and the author of Are Girls Necessary? Lesbian Writing and Modern Histories. 344 pages | 6 x 9 | 2009 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface: The Lives of Homosexuals in the Idea of the City Acknowledgments I. Setting Terms 1. Les Lesbiennes, or The City in History             Femmes damnées             The Vice of Whores             The Victims of Capital             The Heroines of Modernism 2. Oscar Wilde in Los Angeles             Reading Lessons             The Legible City             The Genius of Criminals             Ernest in Town             Socialism and Interpretation II. Claiming Residence 3. Perverts in Groups             The Social Evil in Chicago             Modern Nervousness             La Ville invisible 4. City of Women             The Social Claim and the Industrial City             At Home on Halsted Street 5. Radclyffe Hall at the Chicago School             The Criminal, the Defective, and the Genius             Communal Lives III. The Fear and Hope of Great American Cities 6. Paris, Harlem, Hudson Street—1961             Are Cities Un-American?             History in the City             Children and Strangers             Neighborhoods and Slums 7. City of Feeling             The Culture of Cities             Into the Streets             Ghetto Gentry             Making Urban Meaning Afterword: Queer in the Great City             Somewhere             A Place for Us             The Future of Cities Notes Index

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