One of the best parts of completing this book is remembering the kindness and generosity of the many people who made it possible for me to start, persist, revise, and finish. Some names appear more than once in recognition of the multiple roles those persons have played in my work and life.
I owe much to the editors of NYU Press’s Sexual Cultures Series, Ann Pellegrini, Tavia Nyong’o, and Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson, for supporting this odd project; over the course of writing, conversations with Ann clarified what I was trying to do, and Josh offered feedback and reassurance at just the point that I needed it. The readers for this manuscript, Michael Cobb, Kathryn Schwarz, and a third reader who remained anonymous, provided detailed and rigorous feedback. I hope I have done justice to their generous engagement. Eric Zinner helped me navigate tricky questions of field, audience, and title with patience and humor. Dolma Ombadykow deftly guided this project through its various stages of review and production. Alexia Traganas’s scrupulous editing caught errors I would never otherwise noticed.
David Eng, Madhavi Menon, and Will Stockton were my earliest readers and interlocutors for this project, and their enthusiastic engagement at critical junctures gave me the confidence to pursue it. Many friends and colleagues discussed, read, and encouraged me along the way—so many that to recount their contributions in detail might take a book of its own. Ann Coiro, Kim Coles, Heather Dubrow, Carla Freccero, Lowell Gallagher, Achsah Guibbory, Stephen Guy-Bray, Jeffery Knapp, Arthur Little, Gordon Teskey, Ayanna Thompson, and Chris Warley have been particularly generous with their time, advice, and support. For making me think harder, I’m indebted to Sharon Achinstein, John Archer, J. K. Barret, Crystal Bartolovich, Charlene Villaseñor Black, Gina Bloom, Kate Bonnici, Gordon Braden, Jim Bromley, Dympna Callaghan, Joseph Campana, Anne Coldiron, Julie Crawford, Katherine Crawford, John Curran, Alice Dailey, Drew Daniel, Mario DiGangi, Fran Dolan, Lynn Enterline, Margie Ferguson, John Garrison, Colby Gordon, Catharine Gray, Judith Haber, Graham Hammill, Diana Henderson, Jean Howard, Coppélia Kahn, Victoria Kahn, Aaron Kunin, Russ Leo, Richard Levin, Leah Marcus, Kirsten Mendoza, David Lee Miller, Steve Monte, Erin Murphy, Carol Thomas Neely, Lori Humphrey Newcomb, Sharon O’Dair, Bill Oram, David Orvis, Jonathan Post, Ayesha Ramachandran, Rick Rambuss, Jason Rosenblatt, Colleen Rosenfeld, Kathryn Schwarz, Lauren Silberman, Eric Song, Goran Stanivukovic, Valerie Traub, Harold Veeser, Dan Vitkus, Robert Watson, Will West, and Mary Zaborskis. It was a pleasure getting to know Alan Jenkins a bit amidst the process of securing permission to reprint his wonderful “Itch (the Flea’s Retort).”
Audiences at various talks have pushed me on several points to the considerable benefit of this book. I am grateful to those who took the time to attend and engage with me at the University of Illinois Humanities Center; the Columbia University “Futures” conference; Pomona College; the Huntington Library; UCLA; the Johns Hopkins University ELH Colloquium; the University of Maryland; the Northeast Shakespeare Seminar at Harvard University; Vanderbilt University; UC Berkeley; the Columbia Shakespeare Seminar; the Northeast Milton Seminar at Rutgers University; Brown University; and the Folger Library Seminar on Race and Gender. Particular thanks for invitations and hospitality go to Catharine Gray, Antoinette Burton, Seth Williams, Colleen Rosenfeld, Ari Friedlander, Will Stockton, Ali Behdad, Jonathan Post, Lowell Gallagher, Arthur Little, Kevin Roberts, Coppélia Kahn, Bill Carroll, Jessie Hock, Leah Marcus, Richard Lee, Jeffrey Knapp, John Staines, Denise Walen, Ann Coiro, Tom Luxon, Tom Fulton, Rick Rambuss, Kim Coles, and Ayanna Thompson.
Closer to home, I have relied for years on the support and intellectual challenges offered by my colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania. This book has profited from the insightful comments of Kevin Brownlee, Rebecca Bushnell, Rita Copeland, David Eng, Jed Esty, Scott Francis, Nancy Hirschmann, Amy Kaplan, Zack Lesser, Ania Loomba, Phyllis Rackin, Peter Stallybrass, David Wallace, and Dag Woubshet. Opportunities to present this work at the following local reading groups and events helped sharpen my thinking: the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Work-in-Progress group; the Med Ren seminar; the Reading the Bible in History group; the Shakespeare/Cervantes Conference; the English Department Faculty Colloquium; and the Comparative Liturature Theorizing Seminar. Thanks to Mary Zaborskis and Nancy Hirschmann, Alan Niles and Megan Hall, Drew Starling and Philip Mogen, Zack Lesser and John Pollack, Jed Esty, and Judith Weston and Deanna Cachoian-Schanz for those invitations. Pretty much every idea in this book was worked through in the undergraduate courses and graduate seminars I’ve taught in recent years: Feminist Theory, Queer Theory, Early Modern Sexualities, the English Proseminar, and Queer Theory and Early Modern Studies. Thanks to those students for the many questions and challenges.
I’m grateful to friends and family who have provided kindness, care, advice, hospitality, and laughter: Geraldine Baer, Emilia Belloni, Lisa Bittel, Toni Bowers, Maya Braguti, Dympna Callaghan, Kim Coles, Rita Copeland, Tim Corrigan, Julie Crawford, Katie Crawford, Jeff Dolven, Remi Dreyfuss, Katherine Eggert, David Eng, Carla Freccero, Marcia Ferguson, Linda Gregerson, Paul Hecht, Victorya Hong, Amy Kaplan, David Kazanjian, Suvir Kaul, James Ker, Ania Loomba, Peter Mancall, Duna Mazza, Erin Murphy, Marissa Nicosia, Helen Oesterheld, Mike Olmi, Greer Olmi-Sanchez, Yolanda Padilla, Jo Park, Pat Parker, Sandro Pozzi, Phyllis Rackin, Clarice Sanchez, Tiffany Sanchez, Kathryn Schwarz, Froukje Slofstra, Will Stockton, Salamishah Tillet, Ayanna Thompson, David Wallace, Chris Warley, Tiffany Werth, Will West, and Chi-ming Yang.
And yet once more, final and biggest thanks go to the family I live with. For two decades now, Chris Diffee has been my toughest and best reader and my beloved and trusted companion. That he still likes me after all of these years is both surprising and humbling. Phineas and Sabine witnessed the composition of just about every word of this book; Clive joined us just in time to help with copyedits and proofs. This book is dedicated, with all of my love, to Quincy Jude Sanchez-Diffee, the First and the Only.
Queer Faith contains portions of the following previously published essays, now considerably revised and dispersed throughout: