Outsiders and Others : Queer Friendships in Novels by Hermann Hesse

Outsiders and Others draws on queer theories and queer concepts to explore how characters in Hermann Hesse’s fiction intersect with and connote queerness—such as homoeroticism and nonconformism—and argues that the friendships at the center of Hesse’s stories are queer friendships that challenge heteronormative conceptions of relationality, sexuality, and desire. With readings of the novels Peter Camenzind (1904) and Der Steppenwolf (1927), this dissertation demonstrates that queerness is an esse