“This is a nuanced and fascinating account of the many ways in which contemporary fiction 'troubles' and transforms our thinking about sexuality. The introduction provides a lucid, compelling account of the impact of feminist, queer and postcolonial critical interventions in studies on sexuality, and the essays cover a wide range of writing, from Sarah Waters to contemporary gay male fiction in New Zealand. Sexuality and Contemporary Literature undoubtedly proves the continued importance and vitality of written, as opposed to visual cultures, for our contemporary understanding of sexuality”. – Susan Watkins, Reader in Twentieth-Century Fiction, Leeds Metropolitan University

“Adds a new perspective to the current trend of examining sexuality in literature. An admirable collection.” – Contemporary Women’s Writing

Joel Gwynne is Assistant Professor of English at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where he teaches courses on contemporary literature and feminism. He has published articles in Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Kunapipi: A Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Commonwealth: Essays and Studies, Journal of Gender Studies, and Journal of Contemporary Asia. Professor Gwynne’s forthcoming works includes a chapter in Melvin Burgess: A New Casebook (Palgrave Macmillan) and a coedited collection, Postfeminism and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan).

About Angelia Poon

Angelia Poon is Associate Professor of English at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her research interests include postcolonial studies, Victorian literature, and contemporary writing with a focus on issues pertaining to globalization, and gender and racial subjectivities. Professor Poon is the author of Enacting Englishness in the Victorian Period: Colonialism and the Politics of Performance (Ashgate). She is also coeditor of Writing Singapore: An Historical Anthology of Literature in English (NUS Press) and has published articles on Singapore literature and contemporary women writers like Anita Desai and Monica Ali in various journals including Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Postcolonial Text, and ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature.

About the Contributors

Mridula Nath Chakraborty is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Writing and Society Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. Her work has been published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, South Atlantic Quarterly, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, and Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. She has also published in the edited collections Literature and Translation: Creation, Circulation, Reception; Feminism at the Movies: Understanding Gender in Contemporary Cinema, Interpreting Homes in South Asian Literature; Third Wave Feminism: A Critical Exploration; and “Is Canada Postcolonial?”: Unsettling Canadian Literature. She covers the Indian subcontinental and Sri Lankan region in The Year’s Work in English Studies and undertakes regular review work for magazines like Herizons, Wasafiri, and Biblio.

Helen Davies is an Associate Lecturer in English Literature at Leeds Metropolitan University. She is the author of Gender and Ventriloquism in Victorian and Neo-Victorian Fiction: Passionate Puppets (Palgrave Macmillan). Her other publications include journal articles on Sarah Waters, Oscar Wilde and Will Self, and several book chapters on Oscar Wilde and queer theory. Helen is on the executive committee of the Contemporary Women’s Writing Association. She is currently writing a book about representations of Victorian ‘freak’ show performers in contemporary literature and culture.

Alistair Fox holds a personal chair in the Department of English, and is Director of the Centre for Research on National Identity at the University of Otago. He has written extensively on humanism, politics, and reform in early modern England and more recently has investigated contemporary New Zealand culture, the nature of film authorship, gendered and sexual identity, and the nature and function of fictive representation. His most recent books include The Ship of Dreams: Masculinity in Contemporary New Zealand Fiction (University of Otago Press), Jane Campion: Authorship and Personal Cinema (Indiana University Press), New Zealand Cinema: Interpreting the Past (Intellect/University of Chicago Press), and an English translation from the French of Anne Gillain’s François Truffaut: le secret perdu as François Truffaut: The Lost Secret (Indiana University press), which explores the relationship between autobiography and the authorial fantasmatic.

Maya Linden holds a PhD in Creative Writing/Literary Studies from the University of Adelaide. Her creative and critical writing has been published in many local and international journals including Women’s Studies, Griffith REVIEW, Hecate, Meanjin, Westerly, Life Writing and Australian Book Review as well as several anthologies. Her novella, Anatomy of the Upper Body, was shortlisted for the Alma Books/Lightship First Chapter Award (UK) in 2011 and longlisted for The Australian/Vogel Literary Award 2012. She is contributing editor of Who I Thought She Was, a collection of essays on female friendship (Pan Macmillan, 2013).

Nadine Muller is Lecturer in English Literature and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University (United Kingdom). She completed her doctorate on the feminist politics of neo-Victorian fiction, and is preparing her postdoctoral project, The Widow in British Literature and Culture, 1850–2010. Dr. Muller has published several journal articles and book chapters, with the most recent one being an article on the Victorian widow in neo-Victorian crime fiction in Clues. She has coedited a special issue of the Journal of Gender Studies on ‘Feminisms, Sex and the Body’, an anthology Women and Belief, 1852–1928 (Routledge), and an essay collection titled Postfeminism and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema.

Claire O’Callaghan is a final-year PhD candidate in the School of English at the University of Leicester where she is completing her doctoral thesis on feminist and queer discourse and in the novels of Sarah Waters. In addition to existing publications on Waters, Claire has also written on the Irish author, Emma Donoghue. Claire's research interests centre on historical fiction, women's writing, and feminist theory. She teaches at the University of Leicester and Brunel University where she has contributed to modules on poetry, the women's movement and contemporary women’s writing, and neo-Victorian fiction. Claire is a member of the executive committee of the Feminist and Women’s Studies Association (FWSA).

Jenni Ramone is Senior Lecturer in English at Newman University College. She is the author of Postcolonial Theories (Palgrave Macmillan) and Salman Rushdie and Translation (Continuum), as well as the coeditor of The Richard & Judy Book Club Reader (Ashgate). Her research interests include translation theory, the public and digital performance of literature, and postcolonial literature and theory, particularly the literature of South Asia, the Middle East, and their diasporas.

Foreword

Introduction Joel Gwynne and Angelia Poon

Chapter 1: Toni Bentley’s The Surrender Joel Gwynne

Chapter 2: “Desire and Its Disastrous Results” Maya Linden

Chapter 3: Selling Sugar Nadine Muller

Chapter 4: “Lesbo Victorian Romp” Claire O’Callaghan

Chapter 5: Self-ish Sex? Helen Davies

Chapter 6: Pushing Limits Mridula Chakrabarty

Chapter 7: Intimate Arrangements Angelia Poon

Chapter 8: Psychological Trauma Alistair Fox

Chapter 9: Sweet-Talker, Street-Walker Jenni Ramone

Index

About the Contributors