Introducing Literary Criticism A Graphic - Owen Holland 2015

Key Figures in the Development of Gay and Lesbian Studies

Guy Hocquengham (1946—88) theorized the psychological impetuses of homophobia.

Jeffrey Weeks (b. 1945), a historian and sociologist, has written widely on gender behaviour, the sphere of the intimate, and gay and lesbian sexuality.

Bonnie Zimmerman (b. 1947) has scrutinized essentialist constructions of female identity, highlighting differences of race, class and particularly sexuality. Some of these arguments are elaborated in her essay “What Has Never Been: An Overview of Lesbian Feminist Literary Criticism” (1981).

Adrienne Rich (1929—2012), an American poet, expressed a lesbian separatism that tended towards dissociation from allegiances with the male gay community.