Ethereal Queer by
In Ethereal Queer, Amy Villarejo offers a historically engaged, theoretically sophisticated, and often personal account of how TV representations of queer life have changed as the medium has evolved since the 1950s. Challenging the widespread view that LGBT characters did not make a sustained appearance on television until the 1980s, she draws on innovative readings of TV shows and network archives to reveal queer television's lengthy, rich, and varied history. Villarejo goes beyond concerns about representational accuracy. She tracks how changing depictions of queer life, in programs from Our Miss Brooks to The L Word, relate to transformations in business models and technologies, including modes of delivery and reception such as cable, digital video recording, and online streaming. In so doing, she provides a bold new way to understand the history of television.
Cast Out by
This collection by leading theater performers, practitioners, critics, and passionate spectators offers a backstage pass to the personal and creative lives of some of the most important and influential theater artists of the past fifty years: Edward Albee discusses the homophobic critical attacks he endured in the 50s and 60s; Cherry Jones talks about the first time she accepted a Tony Award - and her decision, in that moment, to come out; Peggy Shaw speaks of the drag queen who first inspired her stage career; Craig Lucas issues an impassioned call for theater practitioners and other artists to unite for the sake of art, creativity, and social change. Also included are memoirs by and interviews with Kate Bornstein, Lisa Kron, Tim Miller, and George C. Wolfe, among others. These diverse voices dispel forever the cliche of theater as a safe haven and replace the stereotype with a nuanced group portrait of the ways in which theater and queerness intersect in our lives.
The l Word by
In January 2004, Showtime debuted The L Word, the first prime-time commercial drama to center around lesbian characters. Over the course of six seasons, the show depicted the lives and loves of an evolving circle of friends in West Hollywood, California, and was widely read as evidence of changing social attitudes toward gay people. Building on immediate critical attention, the show reigned as Showtime's most popular for its first three seasons and earned a large and enthusiastic audience. In The L Word, author Margaret T. McFadden argues that the show is important for its subject matter, its extended and deeply literate commentary on the history of representation of lesbians in popular media, and the formal innovations it deployed to rewrite that history. McFadden shows that the program's creators, led by executive producer Ilene Chaiken, were well aware of the assumptions and expectations that viewers would bring to it after a history of stereotypical depictions of lesbians on television. They sought to satisfy a diverse group of viewers who wanted honest and appealing portrayals of their lives while still attracting a large enough mainstream audience to make The L Word commercially viable. In five chapters, McFadden explores how the show tackled these problems of representation by using reflexivity as a strategy to make meaning, undertaking a complicitous critique of Hollywood, skillfully using a soap-drama format to draw in its audience, and ultimately creating its own complex representation of a lesbian community. While deconstructing the history of misrepresentation of lesbians, The L Word's new modes of storytelling and new perspectives made many aspects of lesbian experience, history, and culture visible to a large audience. Fans of the show as well as readers interested in cultural studies and gay and lesbian pop cultural history will enjoy this astute volume.
Outspoken by
Touching on gender, sexuality, family, pop culture, and history, these pieces range from the hilarious to the poignant, the sexy to the sincere, the truthful to the tongue-in-cheek. Collected by writer and journalist Susan G. Cole from poetry, prose, theatre, and even a graphic novel, the scenes and monologues found in this collection reflect personal, political, and cultural complexities in the Canadian lesbian community. Intended for study or auditions and infinitely readable on its own, OutSpoken includes works by trey anthony, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Mariko Tamaki, d'bi.young.anitafrika, Jovette Marchessault, and many more.
Queer Love in Film and Television by
Focusing primarily on film and televisual texts from the ten years before and after the millennium, the contributors ask how recent films and television programs play with, imitate, subvert, mock, critique, and queer the romantic narrative conventions so common in Western culture.
Cruising the Archive by
Cruising the Archive: Queer Art and Culture in Los Angeles, 1945-1980 explores the rich history of queer art, activism and culture in Los Angeles through artworks, documents, and archival items culled entirely from the collections at ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, the largest LGBTQ archive in the United States. Cruising the Archive includes essays by Ann Cvetkovich, Vaginal Davis, Jennifer Doyle, Judith “Jack” Halberstam, Catherine Lord, Richard Meyer, Ulrike Müller, and Dean Spade that examine various topics related to queer art, aesthetics, politics, and the archive. This publication also includes information on artworks and archival materials from ONE Archives, reprints from early queer publications from Los Angeles including ONE Magazine, an introduction by the exhibition’s co-curators David Frantz and Mia Locks, and a map of historical sites referenced in the publication compiled by Zemula Barr. Artist Onya Hogan-Finlay has produced a limited edition poster that functions as a book jacket, featuring a photograph of friends of ONE Archives.
Homocore by
Music as a form of social activism dates back for centuries, but rarely has there been a movement as provocative, daring and exciting as homocore, the queer-oriented rock scene. Journalist David Ciminelli has been immersed in this scene since the early 90s and his book drops you right in the action as Brian Grillo leaps from the stage at the Viper Room to chase a homophobic heckler up Sunset Boulevard. It takes you backstage as Pansy Division recalls being pelted by coins when they supported Green Day. This is the fascinating story of using music as a powerful tool in gay activism.
Lesbian Art by
This benchmark publication documents the diversity and vitality of lesbian talent in Australia. A hitherto marginalised group, lesbian artists are now being incorporated into mainstream culture and this book provides a timely introduction to the issues explored by these artists, which include sexuality, mythology and religion, mass media and technology. The development of different modes of production through collaborative processes and collective art making is also discussed. The history of the emergence of lesbian art practice into contemporary culture is charted through documentation of alternative exhibition spaces, legislation, protest marches and events such as the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras held annually in Sydney. The acceptance of lesbian art as an art of difference rather than of community is examined. The diversity in lesbian art practice is highlighted through the variety of styles, art forms and practices which the author has uncovered. Performance art, film, video, computer generated imagery as well as painting, sculpture, graphic arts and craft reinforce the impression of a vital, imaginative body of work making an important contribution to late twentieth-century visual art. This book, with its theoretical discussion, historical overview and profiles of leading practitioners will be an invaluable resource for artists, students and teachers in art schools, women's, gender and queer studies, feminists, homosexuals and lesbians.
Listening to the Sirens by
In this fresh and innovative study, Judith A. Peraino investigates how music has been used throughout history to call into question norms of gender and sexuality. Beginning with a close examination of the mythology surrounding the sirens--whose music seduced Ulysses into a state of mind in which he would gladly sacrifice everything for the illicit pleasures promised in their song--Peraino goes on to consider the musical creatures, musical gods and demigods, musical humans, and music-addled listeners who have been associated with behavior that breaches social conventions. She deftly employs a sophisticated reading of Foucault as an organizational principle as well as a philosophical focus to survey seductive and transgressive queerness in music from the Greeks through the Middle Ages and to the contemporary period. Listening to the Sirens analyzes the musical ways in which queer individuals express and discipline their desire, represent themselves, build communities, and subvert heterosexual expectations. It covers a wide range of music including medieval songs, works by Handel, Tchaikovsky and Britten, women's music and disco, performers such as Judy Garland, Melissa Etheridge, Madonna, and Marilyn Manson, and the movies The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
Queer Airwaves: the Story of Gay and Lesbian Broadcasting by
This book is both a retrospective history of the gay community's use of electronic media as a way of networking and creating a sense of community, and an examination of the current situation, an analysis and critical assessment of gay/lesbian electronic media. Keith and Johnson use original interviews and oral history to delineate the place of electronic media in the lives of this increasingly visible and vocal minority in America.
A Queer History of Fashion by
An unprecedented in-depth exploration of the complex interrelationship between high fashion and queer history and culture From Christian Dior to Yves Saint Laurent and Alexander McQueen, many of the greatest fashion designers of the past century have been gay. Fashion and style have played an important role within the LGBTQ community, as well, even as early as the 18th century. This provocative book looks at the history of fashion through a queer lens, examining high fashion as a site of gay cultural production and exploring the aesthetic sensibilities and unconventional dress of LGBTQ people, especially since the 1950s, to demonstrate the centrality of gay culture to the creation of modern fashion. Contributions by some of the world's most acclaimed scholars of gay history and fashion - including Christopher Breward, Shaun Cole, Vicki Karaminas, Jonathan D. Katz, Peter McNeil, and Elizabeth Wilson - investigate topics such as the context in which key designers' lives and works form part of a broader "gay" history; the "archeology" of queer attire back to the homosexual underworld of 18th-century Europe; and the influence of LGBTQ subcultural styles from the trouser suits worn by Marlene Dietrich (which inspired Yves Saint Laurent's "Le Smoking") to the iconography of leather. Sumptuous illustrations include both fashion photography and archival imagery.
Black Like Us by
Winner of the 2003 Lambda Literary Award for Fiction Anthology Showcasing the work of literary giants like Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, and writers whom readers may be surprised to learn were "in the life," Black Like Us is the most comprehensive collection of fiction by African American lesbian, gay, and bisexual writers ever published. From the Harlem Renaissance to the Great Migration of the Depression era, from the postwar civil rights, feminist, and gay liberation movements, to the unabashedly complex sexual explorations of the present day, Black Like Us accomplishes a sweeping survey of 20th century literature.
Butterfly Boy by
Heartbreaking, poetic, and intensely personal, Butterfly Boy is a unique coming out and coming-of-age story of a first-generation Chicano who trades one life for another, only to discover that history and memory are not exchangeable or forgettable. Growing up among poor migrant Mexican farmworkers, Rigoberto Gonz#65533;lez also faces the pressure of coming-of-age as a gay man in a culture that prizes machismo. Losing his mother when he is twelve, Gonz#65533;lez must then confront his father's abandonment and an abiding sense of cultural estrangement, both from his adopted home in the United States and from a Mexican birthright. His only sense of connection gets forged in a violent relationship with an older man. By finding his calling as a writer, and by revisiting the relationship with his father during a trip to Mexico, Gonz#65533;lez finally claims his identity at the intersection of race, class, and sexuality. The result is a leap of faith that every reader who ever felt like an outsider will immediately recognize. 2007 Finalist, Randy Shilts Awards for Gay Nonfiction, Publishing Triangle Winner, American Book Awards, Before Columbus Foundation
Everything I Have Is Blue by
In this age of Will & Grace and gentrification, the dream market and gay investment advisors, you don't hear much about working-class queers. In fact, some would even consider the idea a contradiction in terms. But the contributors to Everything I Have Is Blue: Short Fiction by Working-Class Men About More-or-Less Gay Life would beg to differ. The first collection of short stories by working-class queer, gay, and bisexual men, Everything I Have Is Blue is a rich and long-overdue contribution both to the burgeoning field of working-class studies and to LGBTIQ fiction.
Sister Outsider by
The leader of contemporary feminist theory discusses such issues as racism, self-acceptance, and mother- and woman-hood.
Aberrations in Black by
The sociology of race relations in America typically describes an intersection of poverty, race, and economic discrimination. But what is missing from the picture--sexual difference--can be as instructive as what is present. In this ambitious work, Roderick A. Ferguson reveals how the discourses of sexuality are used to articulate theories of racial difference in the field of sociology. He shows how canonical sociology--Gunnar Myrdal, Ernest Burgess, Robert Park, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and William Julius Wilson--has measured African Americans' unsuitability for a liberal capitalist order in terms of their adherence to the norms of a heterosexual and patriarchal nuclear family model. In short, to the extent that African Americans' culture and behavior deviated from those norms, they would not achieve economic and racial equality. Aberrations in Black tells the story of canonical sociology's regulation of sexual difference as part of its general regulation of African American culture. Ferguson places this story within other stories--the narrative of capital's emergence and development, the histories of Marxism and revolutionary nationalism, and the novels that depict the gendered and sexual idiosyncrasies of African American culture--works by Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and Toni Morrison. In turn, this book tries to present another story--one in which people who presumably manifest the dys-functions of capitalism are reconsidered as indictments of the norms of state, capital, and social science. Ferguson includes the first-ever discussion of a new archival discovery--a never-published chapter of Invisible Man that deals with a gay character in a way thatcomplicates and illuminates Ellison's project. Unique in the way it situates critiques of race, gender, and sexuality within analyses of cultural, economic, and epistemological formations, Ferguson's work introduces a new mode of discourse--which Ferguson calls queer of color analysis--that helps to lay bare the mutual distortions of racial, economic, and sexual portrayals within sociology. A hard-hitting look at the regulation of sexual difference and its role in circumscribing African American culture.
In a New Century by
For gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in the United States, the twenty-first century has brought dramatic changes: the end of sodomy laws, the elimination of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," a move toward recognition of same-sex marriage, Gay-Straight Alliances in thousands of high schools, and an explosion of visibility in the media and popular culture. All of this would have been unimaginable to those living just a few decades ago. Yet, at the same time, the American political system has grown ever more conservative, and increasing economic inequality has been a defining feature of the new century. A pioneering scholar of gay history, John D'Emilio reflects in this wide-ranging collection of essays upon the social, cultural, and political changes provoked by LGBT activism. He offers provocative questions and historical analyses: What can we learn from a life-long activist like Bayard Rustin, who questioned the wisdom of "identity politics"? Was Richard Nixon a "gay liberationist"? How can knowing local stories--like those of Chicago in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s--help build stronger communities and enrich traditions of activism? Might the focus on achieving actually be evidence of growing conservatism in LGBT communities? In a New Century provides a dynamic, thoughtful, and important resource for identifying changes that have occurred in the United States since 1960, taking stock of the work that still needs to be done, and issuing an urgent call to action for getting there. Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians Best Special Interest Books, selected by the Public Library Reviewers
Identity Envy Wanting to Be Who We're Not by
Gay men and lesbians present humorous and hard-hitting accounts of the need to belong . . . somewhere Why would a lesbian raised in a Jewish home have a sudden desire to be a tough-talking Catholic girl? And why would a gay man travel to Ireland in a desperate attempt to escape his "hillbilly" roots? Identity Envy--Wanting to Be Who We're Not explores the connections gay men and lesbians have to religions, races, ethnicities, classes, families of origin, and genders not their own. This unique anthology takes both humorous and serious looks at the identities of others as queer writers explore their own identity envies in personal essays, memoirs, and other creative nonfiction. Gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered, intersex, and other sexual minorities often feel marginalized by mainstream culture and have a need to belong somewhere, to claim a group as their own. This surprising book presents stories of identity envy that are humorous and hard-hitting, poignant and provocative, written with energy, wit, and candor by many of your favorite writers-and some exciting newcomers. Identity Envy--Wanting to Be Who We're Not includes: Gerard Wozek's King Fu-infused "Chasing the Grasshopper" Max Pierce's fantasy of being a "Child Star" that helped him through a troubled family life Lori Horvitz's "Shiksa in my Living Room" D. Travers Scott's "EuroTex" Perry Brass's "A Serene Invisibility: Turning Myself into a Christian Girl" Jim Tushinski's ode to Lost in Space, "The Perfect Space Family" Al Cho's unlikely identification with Laura Ingalls Wilder characters, "Farmer Boy" Irish-American John Gilgun wishes he could be one of those "Italian-American Boys" Joan Annsfire rejects her Jewish heritage to become Catholic schoolgirl Corinne O'Donnell in "The Promise of Redemption" Andrew Ramer's "Tales of a Male Lesbian" city slicker Mike McGinty's life with the cattle folk, "You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Helen" and much more! Identity Envy--Wanting to Be Who We're Not is a must-read for anyone who appreciates good writing--especially gay and lesbian readers who know what it's like to wish you were someone else.
James Baldwin and the Queer Imagination by
The central figure in black gay literary history, James Baldwin has become a familiar touchstone for queer scholarship in the academy. Matt Brim's James Baldwin and the Queer Imagination draws on the contributions of queer theory and black queer studies to critically engage with and complicate the project of queering Baldwin and his work. Brim argues that Baldwin animates and, in contrast, disrupts both the black gay literary tradition and the queer theoretical enterprise that have claimed him. More paradoxically, even as Baldwin's fiction brilliantly succeeds in imagining queer intersections of race and sexuality, it simultaneously exhibits striking queer failures, whether exploiting gay love or erasing black lesbian desire. Brim thus argues that Baldwin's work is deeply marked by ruptures of the "unqueer" into transcendent queer thought--and that readers must sustain rather than override this paradoxical dynamic within acts of queer imagination.
Over the Rainbow by
"Over the Rainbow is lively, engaging, and thoughtful. More to the point, the field of children's literature needs such a collection." ---Katherine Capshaw Smith, University of Connecticut In spite of the growing critical interest concerning gender and sexual nonnormativity in and around narratives written for young readers, no book-length volume on the subject has yet appeared. Over the Rainbow: Queer Children's and Young Adult Literature is the first collection of essays dedicated to LGBTQ issues in children's literature. Bringing together significant essays and introducing new work, Over the Rainbow is intended to serve both as a scholarly reference and as a textbook for students of children's studies; gender/queer studies; and related disciplines such as English, history, sociology, and education. Editors Michelle Ann Abate and Kenneth Kidd showcase important essays on the subject of LGBTQ children's and young adult literature ---including Harriet the Spy, Rainbow Boys, Little Women, the Harry Potter series, and A Separate Peace---while providing a provisional history of both the literature and the scholarship and examining the field's origins, current status, and possible future orientations. Over the Rainbow collects essays by Jes Battis, Robin Bernstein, Thomas Crisp, June Cummins, Elizabeth A. Ford, Sherrie A. Inness, Christine A. Jenkins, Vanessa Wayne Lee, Biddy Martin, Robert McRuer, Claudia Nelson, Jody Norton, Tison Pugh, Catherine Tosenberger, Eric L. Tribunella, Roberta Seelinger Trites, and Andrea Wood. These pieces will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of children's literature, American Studies, LGBTQ and queer studies, cultural studies, and literary criticism. Cover art: Original title page of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by Frank L. Baum, illustrated by W. W. Denslow. New York: George M. Hill, 1900.