Georgetown Professor to Present Paper On Queer Perspectives on Heterosexuality

Washington, D.C. – Georgetown University professor Dana Luciano will present her paper “Femininity’s Queer Time, or, Far From Heaven” at the 2005 Modern Language Association Convention in Washington, D.C., December 27-30. Luciano’s presentation is part of a larger discussion on queer perspectives on heterosexuality.
Luciano examines the concept of time as it relates to femininity in Todd Haynes’ 2002 melodrama Far From Heaven, which centers on the life of Cathy Whittaker, a 1950s housewife, and her relationships with both her closeted gay husband and their black gardener. She argues that Haynes’ film subtly undermines the idealization of the self-sacrificing mother in the classic melodrama. Highlighting Whittaker’s inability to adhere to the traditional role of a 1950s wife and mother, Luciano traces the film’s queerest traits not to Whittaker’s husband but to the protagonist herself.

Dana Luciano teaches sexuality and gender studies in the Department of English at Georgetown University. Her work on the temporality of affect has been published in Arizona Quarterly, The Henry James Review, American Literature, The Western Humanities Review, and the collection Loss: The Politics of Mourning, edited by David Eng and David Kazanjian, and she has recently completed a manuscript titled Arranging Grief: Sacred Time and the Body in Nineteenth-Century America.
Georgetown University is the oldest Catholic and Jesuit university in America, founded in 1789 by Archbishop John Carroll. Georgetown today is a major student-centered, international, research university offering respected undergraduate, graduate and professional programs on its three campuses in Washington, DC.
(news release from Press Zoom)