About
Simone Chess is Associate Chair and Associate Professor of English at Wayne State University and an affiliate of the Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Program. Her book, Male-to-Female Crossdressing in Early Modern English Literature: Gender, Performance, and Queer Relations (Routledge, 2016) argues that representations of male-to-female crossdressers in literature show models of queer male femininities that are relational and beneficial. In addition to the book, she has published articles and book chapters on the topics of crossdressing and gender labor, bathroom activism, ballads and Shakespeare, early modern representations of blindness, the role of oath-making in “murderous wife” ballads, and other aspects of early modern gendered representation. Her next book project will bring together early modern queer and disability studies.
