Professions of Desire: Lesbian and Gay Studies in Literature ed. by George E. Haggerty and Bonnie Zimmerman (review)

72Rocky Mountain Review them as fathers of modern style is based on his valuing their philosophy and religion. Indeed, as Flannery shows by this example, the content and style cannot be separated as one reads their works. Hooker and Bacon become throughout the book symbols of the impossibility of the disconnectedness teachers ofliteracy seek between literacy and politics. In her conclusions, Flannery indicts the present institutional practice of separating the study of literacy and literature. She contends that such a separation weakens the study of language practice by undermining the contributions such a study of language can make to a democratic education. As a result, Flannery concludes that any study of style needs to be cognizant of the history of stylistic authority, which, she concludes, is culturally bound. She points out that the present hue and cry about a purported literacy crisis and prose problem define the terms teachers of English operate under. "And those terms tend to derive from fairly unproblematized notions of reading, writing, and texts and from generally unexamined notions of cultural heritage " (197). Flannery lays this problem at the feet of the academic study of English in the nineteenth century. Kathryn Flannery with her book, The Emperor's New Clothes, offers teachers of English an important reminder. In a discipline that has historically sought credibility through representations of itself as scientific and disinterested, a representation that has been inaccurate, self-serving, and self-perpetuating, it is important to remember Flattery's admonition concerning style as cultural capital. Amid the present national discussions of culture and literacy, we must remember the control the academy has both of the definition of literacy and the access to it. GARY DOHRER Weber State University GEORGE E. HAGGERTY and BONNIE ZIMMERMAN, eds. Professions ofDesire: Lesbian and Gay Studies in Literature. New York: The Modern Language Association ofAmerica, 1995. 240 p. When I started graduate school at the University ofArizona in 1988, 1 was the only out gay man in the English Department; there was one out lesbian, and we were very lonely. When I left in 1993, I had designed two undergraduate and one graduate lesbian/gay literature classes and, in conjunction with the newly-hired out dyke in Women's Studies, had organized the Committee for Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Studies, which is still going strong. This change from homophobic isolation to a slow curricular integration of queer studies has been replicated around the country. And the Modern Language Association is one of the academic organizations at the forefront of that integration. Thus, it is quite appropriate that this collection of eighteen essays, several by some of the field's biggest names (e.g., Lillian Book Reviews73 Faderman, Karla Jay, Michael Moon, Jeff Nunokawa, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Bonnie Zimmerman), should come with its imprimatur. For the same reasons, it is quite unfortunate that the book fails to live up to this high-powered promise. The book is divided into four sections. The essays in the first section, "Teaching Positions," discuss pedagogical concerns of whether, and how, to be out in the classroom. Those in the second section, "Canons and Closets," discuss queering the curriculum. The third section, "Sameness and Difference," focuses on the affects of various identities on queer studies, while the fourth section, "Transgressing Subjects," contains queer readings of specific pieces of literature or art. In their introduction, the editors make several claims about the essays and about the field: that the book is representative of current trends; that the essays should help anyone wishing to do queer academic work; that the essays and the field have political efficacy for academics and nonacademics alike; and that it is crucial to dismantle a monocultural (particularly white) definition ?? lesbian, gay, or queer. However, although there are a number of exciting essays here that meet these claims, there are more that do not. For example, the first three essays of "Canons and Closets" are among the least interesting in the book. Certainly, in these days of right-wing backlash, being out is both more necessary and more contested. And Joseph Chadwick begins his essay "Toward an Antihomophobic Pedagogy" promisingly, calling for an inclusion of queer cultures under the rubric multiculturalism. Unfortunately...