Laura Doyle teaches modern literature and culutral theory at Harvard University.

Winner of the Barbara and George Perkins Award of the Narrative Society

"A useful and important study....Will provide a radical rereading of modernist texts."--Choice

"Doyle's is an original and striking study of a rich variety of modernisms, working with discernment and elegance at the 'compounded' intersection of race, sexualities, and gender."--Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Temple University

"Laura Doyle's book is a timely, readable, and exceedingly provocative analysis of the relation between matriarchal theories and racial politics. Her study of modernist and Harlem Renaissance fictions and the configurations of the racialized mother figure is astute, innovative new work. I admire this book for its scope and finely crafted arguments about the intersections of race and aesthetics."--Dale M. Bauer, University of Wisconsin

"Bordering on the Body criss-crosses the boundaries of the history of science, literary studies, cultural studies, feminism, and African-American studies to produce startlingly original readings of modern classics by Joyce, Woolf, Toomer, Ellison, and Morrison. Doyle's concept of 'racial patriarchy' brilliantly shows the co-dependence of racial and gender hierarchies, particularly as the figure of the 'racial mother' functions as cultural icon that both sustains and dismantles the interdependencies of racism and sexism. This book is a must for anyone interested in intermingling of race and gender in modern literatuire and science."--Susan Stanford Friedman, University of Wisconsin, Madison

"Doyle expands current scholarship on the material."--American Literature