Exploring a series of unsung - and sometimes counterintuitive - resonances between second-wave feminism and queer theory in both Anglophone and Francophone contexts. Queering the Second Wave will consider the works and ideas of feminists including Monique Wittig, Shulamith Firestone, Andrea Dworkin, Marilyn Frye, Donna Haraway, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Cherríe Moraga as precursors of queer theoretical writings by names such as Judith Butler, José Esteban Muñoz, Lee Edelman, Paola Bacchetta, and Judith Jack Halberstam. While acknowledging some of the problems and blindspots of second-wave politics and writing, we nevertheless seek to challenge the assumption that second-wave feminism is politically outdated or invalid. Instead, we imagine cross-generational and cross-discursive dialogues, and trace a genealogy of influence between the second-wave past and the queer present, while also speculating, in some cases, on previously unimagined queer-feminist futures. Key Features - Contains key contributors in the field of feminism and queer theory. - Two of the leading names discussed in the book - Bacchetta and Halberstam - are also, themselves, contributors to Queering the Second Wave. - Reignites debates about second-wave feminism. Lisa Downing is Professor of French Discourses of Sexuality at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her books include, most recently, The Subject of Murder: Gender, Exceptionality, and the Modern Killer (University of Chicago Press, 2013) and the co-authored Fuckology: Critical Essays on John Money's Diagnostic Concepts (with Iain Morland and Nikki Sullivan, University of Chicago Press, 2015). She is currently writing a monograph on "selfish women". Lara Cox is an independent scholar based in Paris, France, She is the author of numerous articles on gender studies, theatre, humour, and performance. Her forthcoming book (with Peter Lang) treats the contemporary intersectional political relevance of avant-garde theatre.

Lisa Downing is Professor of French Discourses of Sexuality at the University of Birmingham. Her most recent book-length publications are After Foucault, as editor (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Selfish Women (Routledge, 2019). She is currently completing a monograph-manifesto, entitled Against Affect, funded in 2021-2 by a Leverhulme Trust Fellowship.

Lara Cox is an independent scholar and the author of numerous articles on gender studies, theatre, and performance. Her new book, Afterlife of the Theatre of the Absurd (2018), treats the contemporary intersectional political relevance of avant-garde theatre. Her next project concerns female satire in French and US contexts.