Introduction : Girl, fan, queer : female film reception in the 1910s -- It disquiets, it delights : same-sex attachments & early female moviegoing -- "Dear Flo :" homoerotic desire & queer identification in private fan mail -- "If I were a man :" genderbending in girls' published fan poems -- Girls, pick up your scissors : the queer makings of the "movie scrap book" fad -- Different from others : movie-illustrated diaries, cross-dressing & circulated discourses on female deviance -- A coding of queer delights : gender nonconformity in girls' movie scrapbooks -- Epilogue : One of us: the corporatization of female fan love and labor.
Summary:
"Gathering an unexplored archive of fan-made scrapbooks, letters, diaries, and photographs, A Queer Way of Feeling explores how, in the 1910s, girls coming of age in the United States used cinema to forge a foundational language of female nonconformity, intimacy, and kinship. Pasting cross-dressed photos on personal scrapbooks and making love to movie actresses in epistolary writing, adolescent girls from all walks of life stitched together established homoerotic conventions with an emergent syntax of film stardom to make sense of mental states, actions, and proclivities self-described as "queer" or "different from the norm." Material testimonies of a forgotten audience, these autobiographical artifacts show how early movie-loving girls engendered terminologies, communities, and creative practices that would become cornerstones of media fan reception and queer belonging"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.