In this dissertation I examine the entanglement between female literacy and female sexuality in nineteenth-century Brazilian novels. I investigate the ways in which male authors used literature as a mechanism for policing female sexuality and stabilizing the traditional family. I argue that nineteenth-century Brazilian fiction exhibits a recurring preoccupation with...
“Queer Correspondence: Form and Femininity in the Long Eighteenth Century” interrogates the role that the epistolary form played in the construction, representation, and discipline of female gender expressions and sexualities across the eighteenth century. Working from the perspectives of queer theory, formal analysis, and literary history, this dissertation argues that...