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Queer Theory / Queer Fiction with Carolyn Dinshaw and Garth Greenwell

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Thursday, 7:00 pm EDT November 18, 2021

Online via Zoom & at
The Center for Fiction*

In-person tickets are sold out. All registrants will receive a link to livestream the event.

Bringing together novelists and poets with literary theorists and literary historians, Creative Writing and Critical Thought is a series of lively and in-depth conversations about the state of literary practice and study in contemporary American culture.

In this installment, Garth Greenwell (Cleanness, What Belongs to You), Lambda Literary Award finalist and author of the “the great gay novel for our times” (the New Republic), joins Carolyn Dinshaw (How Soon Is Now?, Getting Medieval), world renowned scholar of queer theory and LGBTQ studies, in conversation. Greenwell and Dinshaw will discuss desire and discovery, past and present, through their intersecting lenses of fiction and theory.

The conversations that result from this series will be published in the New Literary History journal as well as online, creating a permanent record of dialogues among a variety of prominent writers and theorists thinking together about the nature and role of creative practice.

Creative Writing and Critical Thought is an occasional series co-sponsored by New Literary History and The Center for Fiction.


Proof of vaccination is required to attend this event in person. Mask wearing is also required throughout the building. Accepted vaccination proofs include:

  • CDC vaccination card
  • Excelsior pass
  • a record of vaccination from the healthcare provider who administered your vaccine

If you remain unvaccinated because of a disability or sincerely held religious belief, please contact us at [email protected] for assistance or to request a reasonable accommodation.

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In Conversation

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    Carolyn Dinshaw

    Carolyn Dinshaw

    Carolyn Dinshaw is Julius Silver Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and English at New York University and one of the world’s leading scholars of queer theory and LGBTQ studies. She is a medievalist whose research not only focuses on the late Middle Ages in England and beyond, but also explores the relationship of past to present. Her award-winning book, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics (1989), was the first full-length feminist study of Chaucer. She followed this with two books that develop analyses of desires for the past: Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern (1999) and How Soon is Now? Medieval Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of Time (2012). With David M. Halperin she founded the flagship journal of LGBTQ Studies, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. Before moving to NYU, Dinshaw taught for many years at the University of California at Berkeley, where she was instrumental in the early development of LGBT Studies. At NYU, she founded and directed the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality and, more recently, served as Dean for the Humanities. In the classroom, she regularly teaches materials past and present, in courses ranging from Medieval Misogyny to Queer New York City.

  • Greenwell, Garth (c) Oriette D'Angelo

    Garth Greenwell

    Garth Greenwell

    Garth Greenwell is the author of the acclaimed Cleanness (FSG, 2020), a work of fiction that Colm Tóibín, writing in a review featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, called, “bravura writing” and “brilliantly executed.” Frank Bidart hailed it as “a masterpiece”, and compared Greenwell to Joyce and Lawrence. Cleanness was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and France’s Prix Sade. It was named a New York Times Notable Book, a New York Times Critics Top 10 Book of the Year, and a Best Book of 2020 by the New Yorker, TIME, NPR, the BBC, and more than 30 other publications. Greenwell’s first novel, What Belongs to You (FSG, 2016), won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, it was named a Best Book of 2016 by over fifty publications in nine countries, was praised as “the great gay novel for our times” by the New Republic, and has been translated into fourteen languages. His short fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, A Public Space, and VICE, and he has written criticism for the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, and Harpers, among others.

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