Lillian Faderman papers, 1976-1989

Summary

Creators:

Faderman, Lillian

Abstract:

Faderman's papers consist of drafts of her published papers and book reviews and manuscript and typescript versions of three of her books: Surpassing the Love of Men (1981); Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers (1991) and Chloe Plus Olivia (1994). The papers also include background research for her various publications; correspondence relating to her publications and speaking engagements; publicity materials and lesbian, gay and women's publications produced by now defunct small presses and various organizations.

Extent:

8 oversize_boxes

Language:

Materials are in English.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Lillian Faderman papers (Collection 1849). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

Background

Scope and content:

The Lillian Faderman papers document the internationally acclaimed lesbian historian's professional life. Papers date from 1975-1994, with the majority spanning the period 1979-1989. Among the papers are drafts of her published papers and book reviews and manuscript drafts of three of her books; correspondence, publicity materials, background research, contracts and royalty statements, printed matter, photographs and audio materials.

Publications, 1981-1994 (Series 1, Boxes 1-13), include drafts of Faderman's published papers and book reviews and manuscript drafts of three of her books: Surpassing the Love of Men (1981), an acclaimed study of five centuries of love between women; Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers (1991), a history of twentieth-century lesbians in America and Chloe Plus Olivia (1994), an anthology of lesbian literature since the seventeenth century.

Correspondence, 1979-1989 and undated (Series 2, Boxes 14-17), is with individuals; agents and publishers and institutions and organizations and concerns awards and prizes; the editorial process for Surpassing the Love of Men, including Faderman's choice of a commercial New York publisher; requests for reviews, speaking engagements and for Faderman's participation in programs or events; fan mail; legal matters, including foreign subsidiary rights and research files. Also included are letters and cards from Faderman's friends and a photograph of Phyllis Irwin, Faderman's domestic partner.

Printed Matter, 1975-1990 (Series 3, Box 18 and oversized boxes 19-27) includes newsletters, periodicals and newspapers of various lesbian, gay and women's organizations and groups and now defunct small presses.

Audio Materials, 1980-1981 (Series 4, Box 18) consists of both taped materials and compact discs covering interviews by Faderman with Barbara Gittings, an early pioneer lesbian activist, and Mariana Romo-Carmona, a Latina lesbian artist from New York City, for Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers.

Biographical / historical:

Lillian Faderman is an internationally-known literary scholar and historian of lesbian history. She has published nine books and numerous articles on lesbian history, literature and criticism, including Surpassing the Love of Men (1981), an acclaimed study of five centuries of love between women, and Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers (1991), a history of twentieth-century lesbians in America, which were both named among The New York Times notable books of the year; her memoir, Naked in the Promised Land (2003) and her latest book, Gay L.A. (2006), which she co-authored with Stuart Timmons.

Faderman's work has centered on establishing a lesbian tradition, on what she calls a "usable past." In her early works, especially in Surpassing the Love of Men and Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, she showed that so-called romantic friendships between women were considered neither abnormal nor undesirable in prior centuries. Accordingly, women who loved women in the past were not always made to live like outlaws. Only after 1980, in the aftermath of sexology, did same-sex love between women come to be seen as suspect, degenerate or even criminal. Faderman has also written on the theme of same-sex love and romantic friendship in poems and letters of Emily Dickenson; in novels by Henry James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and in popular magazine fiction of the early twentieth century.

Faderman's later book, To Believe in Woman: What Lesbians Have Done for America–A History (1999) is the culmination of her two previous books, Surpassing the Love of Men and Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers. It charts romantic friendships between women and lesbian love through some of the most important social movements in the U.S. and shows how these same-sex partnerships made major feminist causes of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries possible.

Faderman's other major books, each groundbreaking when it was published, are Lesbians in Germany (1980), her first work in lesbian history; Scotch Verdict (1983), which chronicles the 1810 trial of two Scottish schoolteachers accused of lesbianism; Chloe Plus Olivia (1994), an anthology of lesbian literature since the seventeenth century and I Begin My Life All Over: The Hmong and the American Immigrant Experience (1998), which records the story of 36 Hmong immigrants to California. Her articles on lesbian life and literature have appeared in diverse academic, feminist and lesbian journals, including The New England Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Journal of Popular Culture, Higginson Journal, Journal of Homosexuality, Signs, Conditions and Gay Books Bibliography.

Faderman was born July 18, 1940 in the Bronx, New York, the daughter of a single working mother who lost most of her family in the Holocaust. Throughout her childhood, Faderman's dream was to become a movie star. Faderman's family moved to east L.A. when she was a teen and she later attended U.C. Berkeley, where she worked as a burlesque stripper to support herself. She received a B.A. in English literature from U.C. Berkeley in 1962, an M.A. in English from UCLA in 1964, and a Ph.D. in English from UCLA in 1967. In 1967, Faderman started teaching in the English department at California State University, Fresno, where she began her career co-editing two anthologies of American multi-ethnic literature: Speaking for Ourselves: American Ethnic Writing (1969; 1975) and From the Barrio: A Chicano Anthology (1973).

Faderman served in various administrative positions (1971-1976) at California State University, Fresno, including Chair of the English Department, Acting Dean of the School of Humanities and Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs and then decided she preferred teaching and writing. Faderman, along with Phyllis Irwin, helped establish the first women's study program at California State University, Fresno in 1972. She was promoted to full Professor of English in 1973. Irwin later became her domestic partner of 40 years. They have one child: Avrom (1975- ).

Throughout her career, Faderman has been sought after as a speaker, teacher, critic, and visiting lecturer. Faderman has been a frequent speaker at lesbian and feminist organizations, universities, and lesbian, gay and women's organizations nationally and internationally, including the Modern Language Association (MLA), the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA), GAU (Gay Academic Union) and the Berkshire Women's History Conference.

Faderman's work has been translated into numerous languages, including German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Turkish, Czech, and Slovenian. Among her many honors are six Lambda Literary Awards, two American Library Association Awards, and several lifetime achievement awards for scholarship, including Yale University's James Brudner Award, the Monette/Horwitz Award, the Publishing Triangle Award, the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives Culture Hero Award, and the American Association of University Women's Distinguished Senior Scholar Award. She divides her time between Fresno and San Diego.

Missing Title

Date	Event
1940	Born July 18, Bronx, NY.
1962	Received B.A. in English Literature from U.C. Berkeley.
1964	Received M.A. in English from UCLA.
1967	Received Ph.D. in English from UCLA.
1967 - Present	Started teaching in the English department at California State University, Fresno.
1969	Co-edited Speaking for Ourselves: American Ethnic Writing
1971 - 1976	Served in various administrative positions at California State University, Fresno, including Chair of the Department of English, Acting Dean of the School of Humanities, and Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs.
1973	Co-edited From the Barrio: A Chicano Anthology
1973	Promoted to full Professor of English California State University, Fresno.
1980	Co-authored Lesbians in Germany, first book on a lesbian topic
1981	Published Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the 16th Century to the Present.
1983	Published Scotch Verdict
1991	Published Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers
1994	Published Chloe Plus Olivia
1998	Published I Begin My Life All Over: The Hmong and the American Immigrant Experience.
1999	Published To Believe in Woman: What Lesbians Have Done for America-A History
2003	Published Naked in the Promised Land
2006	Co-published Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power, Politics and Lipstick Lesbians with Stuart Timmons

Acquisition information:

Gift of Lillian Faderman, 1991.

Processing information:

Collections are processed to a variety of levels depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived user interest and research value, availability of staff and resources, and competing priorities. Library Special Collections provides a standard level of preservation and access for all collections and, when time and resources permit, conducts more intensive processing. These materials have been arranged and described according to national and local standards and best practices.

The collection was processed by Janine Liebert in 2007-2008.

We are committed to providing ethical, inclusive, and anti-racist description of the materials we steward, and to remediating existing description of our materials that contains language that may be offensive or cause harm. We invite you to submit feedback about how our collections are described, and how they could be described more accurately, by filling out the form located on our website: Report Potentially Offensive Description in Library Special Collections.

Arrangement:

Arranged in the following series:

• Series 1. Publications, 1981-1994. Boxes 1-13
• Series 2. Correspondence, 1979 - 1989, n.d.. Boxes 14-17
• Series 3. Printed matter, 1975-1990. Box 18 and oversized boxes 19-26
• Series 4. Audio materials, 1987, Oct.. Box 18

Physical location:

Stored off-site. All requests to access special collections material must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.

Rules or conventions:

Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Related resources

Related material:

This collection forms part of the The June L. Mazer Archive at UCLA.

Other descriptive data:

UCLA Catalog Record ID: 9964130693606533

Indexed terms

Names:

Faderman, Lillian

Restrictions:

Open for research. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.

Terms of access:

Property rights to the objects belong to UCLA Library Special Collections. All other rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Lillian Faderman papers (Collection 1849). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

Location of this collection:

UCLA, Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library

A1713 Charles E. Young Research Library

Box 951575

Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575, US

Contact:

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