Heather Love papers (Ms.2022.001)

Biographical/Historical Note

Heather Love received her A.B. in Literature from Harvard University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia. Her research interests include gender and sexuality studies, twentieth-century literature and culture, affect studies, sociology and literature, disability studies, film and visual culture, and critical theory. She is the author of Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History (Harvard) and the editor of a special issue of GLQ on Gayle Rubin ("Rethinking Sex") and the co-editor of a special issue of Representations ("Description Across Disciplines"). She has written on topics including comparative social stigma, compulsory happiness, transgender fiction, spinster aesthetics, and reading methods in literary studies. A new book, Underdogs: Social Deviance and Queer Theory (University of Chicago Press), came out in Fall 2021.

In approximately 2019, Love suffered a serious stroke that impacted her vision and writing ability. Some evidence of this experience is included in the collection. Additional materials about this experience may be added in the future.