Whiteness and Queer Studies
Abstract
This chapter surveys recent interventions within queer studies on race in American literature to demonstrate how whiteness depends upon sexuality and gender. Queer studies scholarship on the linked history of whiteness and heterosexuality in turn-of-the-century racial science shows how whiteness draws strength through alliance with heterosexuality as normative, natural, and hegemonic. Meanwhile, the deep skepticism in queer and trans studies of heteronormativity and the biological bases of gender helps to excavate the constructedness of whiteness. Finally, recent scholarship on same-sex desire identifies how homoeroticism has affirmed whiteness across centuries of American literature. The essay further explores these approaches with three novels as case studies: Thomas Dixon's The Leopard's Spots (1902), Nella Larsen's Passing (1929), and Casey McQuiston's Red, White, and Royal Blue (2019). These novels demonstrate how gender and sexuality contribute to race-making and how whiteness can conscript heterosexual romance and homoerotic desire into the project of white supremacy.
Publication Title
Whiteness and American Literature
Recommended Citation
Donnelly, A. (2025). Whiteness and Queer Studies. Whiteness and American Literature, 236-250. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009522748.020
