“[C]areful, scholarly, and insightful. . . .” - Susan J. Leonardi , Signs
"By consistently attending to the often selfish leveraging of race and class in stories of female homosexual passion, Dangerous Intimacies emerges as a valuable cautionary tale and a timely complication in the bedtime story of romantic friendship." - Bonnie Blackwell , Eighteenth-Century Studies
"Moore posits a provocative thesis, one which foregrounds the expressive and transformative power of literature. . . . Engaging and thoughtful. . . ." - Pam Lieske , Eighteenth-Century Studies
"The best thing about Lisa Moore’s new book is not that it puts sex back into the history of ‘romantic friendships’ between women; nor that it explodes the myth that there were no ‘lesbians’ before the end of the nineteenth century; nor, finally, that it gives ‘Sapphic history’ a prominent place in both the institutional history of the novel and the ideological genealogy of modernity. Dangerous Intimacies, certainly, aspires to and largely achieves all of these hefty ambitions. Yet its most salutary contribution to literary studies and lesbian historiography may well lie elsewhere in its timely reminder that representations of lesbian desire, despite their much-remarked ‘disruptive aspects’ can be appropriated to serve cultural goals that are anything but revolutionary. . . . The spectacle of female same-sex desire, as Moore’s readings deftly show, can actually be made to contribute to the development of the very ideological forces that ‘Sapphism’ would seem best positioned to challenge." - Jody Greene, Nineteenth-Century Literature
“Engaging and original . . . Dangerous Intimacies makes a singular contribution to lesbian studies, feminist studies, and the history of the novel.” - Beth Kowaleski-Wallace, Boston College
“Moore refers to some of the most important current debates in queer theory—the nature of sexual identity, its history, its roots, and its relation to other factors in identity formations, such as race, class, ethnicity, gender, and national origin. She locates those arguments in persuasive, insightful readings that are refreshingly unhackneyed.” - Sally O’Driscoll, Fairfield University
