Henry D. Abelove

Henry D. Abelove (born 1945) is an American historian and literary critic. Most of his writings focus on the history of sex during the modern era, and he is widely considered to be an important figure in the development of gay and lesbian studies and queer theory. He is best known for his groundbreaking books The Evangelist of Desire: John Wesley and the Methodists (Stanford University Press, 1990) and Deep Gossip (University of Minnesota Press, 2003) along with The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (Routledge, 1993) (co-edited with Michele Aina Barale and David Halperin) which codified the fields of gay and lesbian studies and queer theory and provided them with their first teaching anthology.