This article is an example of why I find historiographic analysis worth the trouble to slog through the terminology and mental gymnastics (and the occasional need to chase down questions like "what exactly does 'alterity' mean in this context?"). Writers of historical fiction are always asking the question, "What is our relationship to the past?" whether they realize it or not. And fiction constantly weaves between the idea that the past has a concrete, objective existence, and the understanding that all events and all people exist within a subjective context that gives them meaning to the perceiver. Traub does a great job of sorting out various approaches that historians have taken to the question of what relationship exists between women who love women at different times and places across history and proposes some new ways of thinking about that question.
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