Entanglements and Weavings: Diffractive Approaches to Gender and Love

This edited volume focuses on gender and love as emerging through complex “entanglements and weavings”. At a time when constructionist ideas are losing support, we interrogate theoretical paradigms to assess if constructionist notions still hold value or if new approaches are needed to address the effects of materiality and non-human agency. Without claiming any unison or definite answers, we offer situated, agential cuts into gender and love in various discursive-material phenomena, including Biblical and Rabbinic literature, ecosexual performance art, the writings of Ursula Le Guin and Angela Carter, butch identities, Bengali folktales, Ferzan Özpetek’s cinema, Golem literature, sexual pursuits in Danish nightlife, mother-daughter relationships, women warriors in the PKK, and BDSM performances. Artistic photographer Sara Davidmann has contributed to the book with the cover illustration and a creative afterword including seven photographs on the interaction between the photographer, her studio, and LGBTQ+ people.

Deirdre C. Byrne, Ph.D. (1996), is Professor of English at the University of South Africa. She has written on Ursula Le Guin’s poetry, co-edited Fluid Gender, Fluid Love (Brill, 2018), and is the editor of Scrutiny2: Issues in English Studies in Southern Africa.

Marianne Schleicher, Ph.D. (2003), is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark. She has authored Intertextuality in the Tales of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (Brill, 2007) and has written extensively on gender and the function of scripture in Jewish religion.