Reading Sideways explores the role various art forms played in American literary fiction in direct relation to the politics of gender and sexuality at the turn of the century. Each chapter takes a different art form as its object: sculpture, portraiture, homecraft, and opera, which appear in the major works of the period central to questions of gender, race, and sexuality, including those by Henry James, Davis, Willa Cather, Du Bois, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Mary Wilkins Freeman. Inhaltsverzeichnis List of Illustrations | vii Introduction | 1 1. Strange Beauty | 15 2. Small Collectivity and the Low Arts | 43 3. The Impossible Art Object of Desire | 75 4. Willa Cather and W. E. B. Du Bois Go to the Opera | 112 Part One: A Continuous Repetition of Sound | 116 Part Two: Endless Melody | 138 Conclusion | 159 Acknowledgments | 163 Notes | 167 Index | 187
