Elizabeth Freeman is Professor of English at the University of California, Davis, and the author of Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories and The Wedding Complex: Forms of Belonging in Modern American Culture, both also published by Duke University Press.

Acknowledgments  vii
Introduction  1
1. Shake it Off: The Physiopolitics of Shaker Dance, 1774–1856  27
2. The Gift of Constant Escape: Playing Dead in African American Literature, 1849–1900  52
3. Feeling Historicisms: Libidinal History in Twain and Hopkins  87
4. The Sense of Unending: Defective Chronicity in "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and "Melanctha"  124
5. Sacra/Mentality in Djuna Barnes's Nightwood  158
Coda. Rhythm Travel  187
Notes  191
References  199
Index  219