Bio: (1950-2009) American literary critic and queer theorist. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick holds a doctorate from Yale University and has taught literary theory at several American universities, one of which is the University of California, Berkeley. In the book Between Men: English Literature and Men's Homosocial Desire (1985), she explores the hidden homoerotic subplots in the novels of Charles Dickens and Henry James. Also, in this book, she introduces the term "homosocial" to denote a non-sexual social desire to be surrounded by people of the same sex.

In the book Epistemology of the Closet (1990), she states that the central link between all thoughts and knowledge in Western culture in the twentieth century was the binary division into homosexual/heterosexual. This binary division serves as a source of information about sexuality, but also about all other social institutions. “Closet” in her theory refers not only to hiding homosexuality but to all human desires that are hidden or invisible. She believes that heterosexual masculinity always builds itself through the simultaneous exploitation and denial of homosexuality. Since heterosexual masculinity is always unstable, it must be proven and defined as the opposite of homosexuality, so homosexuality, although constantly denied, serves as evidence of heterosexual masculinity, and therefore becomes necessary to maintain the binary division. Sedgwick is one of the pioneers of the interdisciplinary field of queer studies.

Main works

Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985);

Epistemology of the Closet (1990);

Tendencies (1993);

Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction (1997);

A Dialogue on Love (2000);

Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (2003).