Claude J. Summers

Claude J. Summers (born 1944) is an American literary scholar, and the William E. Stirton Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. He taught at the university from 1970 until his retirement in 2002. He was promoted to associate professor in 1973 and to professor in 1977. He became the William E. Stirton Professor in Humanities in 1989, and became professor emeritus in 2002. He has published extensively on 17th and 20th century English literature.

With Ted-Larry Pebworth, Summers co-founded the University of Michigan-Dearborn Biennial Renaissance Conference Series, which began in 1974 and concluded in 2000. The conference series attracted leading scholars in the field of seventeenth-century English literature and resulted in numerous collections of essays, most edited by Summers and Pebworth.

From 2002 until 2015, Summers was general editor of glbtq.com, an online encyclopedia that presented detailed biographies of notable gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer people, as well as essays on lgbt history and culture. In that capacity, he also edited three volumes of entries from glbtq.com, which were published by Cleis Press as The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts, The Queer Encyclopedia of Film and Television, and The Queer Encyclopedia of Music, Dance & Musical Theater.

Summers is the recipient of a Lambda Literary Award for The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage and several of his books have been designated "Outstanding Scholarly Books" by the American Library Association. In 2008, he received the Monette-Horwitz Trust Award for his efforts in combating homophobia.^[1]

Summers has a bachelor's degree from Louisiana State University and an A.M. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. In 2013, he and his frequent collaborator, Ted-Larry Pebworth, were married on the fiftieth anniversary of their relationship.^[2] They reside in New Orleans, where they have lived since their retirement from the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

Selected writings

• Summers, Claude J. (1987). "Remarks occasioned by the death of C. A. Patrides". Milton Quarterly 21 (1): 33–36. doi:10.1111/j.1094-348X.1987.tb00706.x. 
• Summers, Claude J.; Pebworth, Ted-Larry, eds. (1989), "Introduction", Figures in a Renaissance context, essays by C. A. Patrides, University of Michigan Press, pp. 1–5, ISBN 978-0-472-10119-1 
• Summers, Claude, ed. The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage. New York: Henry Holt, 1995; rev. ed., Routledge, 2002.
• Summers, Claude. Gay Fictions / Wilde to Stonewall: Studies in a Male Homosexual Literary Tradition. New York: Continuum, 1990.
• Summers, Claude. E.M. Forster. New York: Ungar, 1983.
• Summers, Claude. Christopher Isherwood. New York: Ungar, 1980.
• Summers, Claude, and Ted-Larry Pebworth. Ben Jonson Revised. New York: Twayne, 1999.

References