In Memoriam: Robert K. Martin

[...]all of this work exists alongside essays and book chapters on crucial figures in an expanding canon that Martin taught us to read anew: Before a multi-generational audience of scholars and students who packed the room, stood along the back wall, and sat on the floor, three distinguished scholars sounded the depths of Martin's scholarly work in the context of the continuing unfolding of Lesbian and Gay Studies, and then listened as audience members commented on his political bravery-not only staking his academic career on an open acknowledgment of his own homosexuality, but also focusing his scholarship on the irreducible relevance of sexuality and homosexuality for literary studies. The papers were published in GLQ in 2008 ("Queer Lineations: Robert K. Martin and Gay Literary Studies"), providing an opportunity for everyone to reacquaint themselves with Martin's contributions not only to American gay and lesbian literary and cultural studies, but also to the study of a wide array of British, European, and Canadian artists, writers, and theorists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.