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Key scholars in the field of lesbian and sexuality studies take part in an innovative conversation that offers a radical new methodology for writing lesbian history and geography, drawing new conclusions on the important and often overlooked work being done on female same-sex desire and identity in relation to premodern cultures.

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Preface: Lesbian Studies Meets the Premodern; K.Lochrie Introduction: The Lesbian Premodern; N.Giffney, M.M.Sauer & D.Watt PART I: THEORIES AND HISTORIOGRAPHIES ´The Present Future of Lesbian Historiography´; V.Traub ´´A Wrangling Parliament´: Terminology and Audience in Medieval European Literary Studies and Lesbian Studies´; A.Laskaya ´Lesbian History and Erotic Reading´; L.Farina ´The Queer Time of the Lesbian Premodern´; C.Freccero ´´Virgins´ and ´Not Women´: Dissident Gender Positions´; T.Jankowski PART II: READINGS AND HISTORIES ´Virgin Desires: Reading a Homoerotics of Female Monastic Community´; L.M.C.Weston ´Medieval Barbie Dolls: Femme Fatales in Ascetic Collections´; A.Klosowska ´Naming Love: The God Kama, the Goddess Ganga and the Child of Two Women´; R.Vanita ´Remembering Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge´; J.M.Bennett ´Towards a Philology of the Premodern Lesbian´; H.Puff PART III: ENCOUNTERS WITH THE LESBIAN PREMODERN ´Lesbian Time´; H.Bauer ´A Usable Past?´; L.Faderman ´Sacramentality and the Lesbian Premodern´; E.Freeman ´Invention is the Necessity of Lesbians´; L.Garber ´Lesbian Ghosts´; M.Vicinus Afterword: The Lesbian Premodern Meets the Lesbian Postmodern; R.Wiegman

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Noreen Giffney is a research coordinator in the Graduate Research and Education Programme in Gender, Culture, and Identity in the Humanties Institute at the University College Dublin, Ireland.

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