Out on Stage: Lesbian and Gay Theatre in the Twentieth Century. By Alan Sinfield. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000; 407. $29.95 hardcover; Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality. Edited by Calvin Thomas. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000; pp. 290. $49.95 hardback, $18.95 paperback.

2001 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 240-243
Author(s):  
James Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Yale University ◽  
Modern Drama ◽  
Tony Kushner ◽  
Complex Relation ◽  
Critical History ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender

Playwright Tony Kushner has called the remarkable generation of gay and lesbian playwrights examined in these two books a “weird little golden age” of dramatists, filmmakers, and theorists. Each book deals with aspects of this twentieth-century gay – lesbian renaissance and, for scholars, opens the field of sexuality and gender to an emphasis on theatre history, culture, and literary theory. Of these two works, Alan Sinfield's Out on Stage stands out as an essential critical history of homosexuality in modern drama, while Straight with a Twist, edited by Calvin Thomas, is an interesting collection of a dozen essays on aspects of Queer Theory (embracing variant definitions of the term from Rimbaud to Foucault) viewed through the prism of the heterosexual gaze and its complex relation to the gay – lesbian “other.”

scholarly journals ‘Now—for a breath I tarry’: Breath, Desire, and Queer Materialism at the fin de siècle

2021 ◽  
pp. 345-365
Author(s):  
Fraser Riddell
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Victorian Literature ◽  
Individual Subject ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
Embodied Subjectivity ◽  
Magnus Hirschfeld ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractRiddell explores how tropes of breath and breathlessness articulate the relationship between materiality, desire, and loss for queer subjects in Victorian literature. The essay presents readings of A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad, John Addington Symonds’s Memoirs, and Walter Pater’s ‘Sebastian van Storck’ (from Imaginary Portraits). It also examines nineteenth-century sexology (including writings by Magnus Hirschfeld) to demonstrate how certain modes of breathing were directly associated with non-normative sexuality in the period. Riddell draws upon insights from contemporary queer theory, in its turns toward negative affect and phenomenology, to examine precarious forms of embodied subjectivity in the history of homosexuality. By doing so, he demonstrates how experiences of embodiment are never universal but closely bound up with individual subject positions (such as sexuality and gender).

scholarly journals Queer Theory, Sex Work, and Foucault’s Unreason

2017 ◽  
pp. 141-166
Author(s):  
Brooke M. Beloso
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Worker Rights ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Field Of Inquiry

During the late nineties, leading voices of the sex worker rights movement began to publicly question queer theory’s virtual silence on the subject of prostitution and sex work. However, this attempt by sex workers to “come out of the closet” into the larger queer theoretical community has thus far failed to bring much attention to sex work as an explicitly queer issue. Refusing the obvious conclusion—that queer theory’s silence on sex work somehow proves its insignificance to this field of inquiry—I trace in Foucault’s oeuvre signs of an alternate (albeit differently) queer genealogy of prostitution and sex work. Both challenging and responding to long-standing debates about prostitution within feminist theory, I offer a new queer genealogy of sex work that aims to move beyond the rigid oppositions that continue to divide theorists of sexuality and gender. Focusing specifically on History of Madness (1961), Discipline and Punish (1975), and History of Sexuality Volume I (1976), I make the case for an alternate genealogy of sex work that takes seriously both the historical construction of prostitution and the lived experience of contemporary sex workers.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Colm Hogan
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Social Constructionism ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
The Third ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Sexual Part ◽  
The One ◽  
And Behavior

The introduction first sets out some preliminary definitions of sex, sexuality, and gender. It then turns from the sexual part of Sexual Identities to the identity part. A great deal of confusion results from failing to distinguish between identity in the sense of a category with which one identifies (categorial identity) and identity in the sense of a set of patterns that characterize one’s cognition, emotion, and behavior (practical identity). The second section gives a brief summary of this difference. The third and fourth sections sketch the relation of the book to social constructionism and queer theory, on the one hand, and evolutionary-cognitive approaches to sex, sexuality, and gender, on the other. The fifth section outlines the value of literature in not only illustrating, but advancing a research program in sex, sexuality, and gender identity. Finally, the introduction provides an overview of the chapters in this volume.

scholarly journals Converging Feminist and Queer Legal Theories: Family Feuds and Family Ties

2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine Craig
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Family Ties ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Cour De Justice

The notion that queer theory and feminism are inevitably in tension with one another has been well developed both by queer and feminist theorists. Queer theorists have critiqued feminist theories for being anti-sex, overly moralistic, essentialist, and statist. Feminist theorists have rejected queer theory as being uncritically pro-sex and dangerously protective of the private sphere. Unfortunately these reductionist accounts of what constitutes a plethora of diverse, eclectic and overlapping theoretical approaches to issues of sex, gender, and sexuality, often fail to account for the circumstances where these methodological approaches converge on legal projects aimed at advancing the complex justice interests of women and sexual minorities. A recent decision from the Ontario Court of Justice addressing a three-parent family law dispute involving gay and lesbian litigants demonstrates why recognition of the convergences between feminist and queer legal theories can advance both queer and feminist justice projects. The objective of this article is to demonstrate, through different and converging interpretations of this case that draw on some of the theoretical insights offered in a new anthology called Feminist and Queer Legal Theory, one rather straight-forward claim. The claim advanced here is that activists, advocates, litigants and judges are all well served by approaching complex legal problems involving sex, sexuality and gender with as many “methods” for pursuing and achieving justice as possible.La notion que la théorie homosexuelle et le féminisme sont inévitablement en conflit l’un avec l’autre a été bien développée à la fois par les théoriciens et théoriciennes homosexuels et féministes. Les théoriciens et théoriciennes homosexuels ont critiqué les théories féministes les qualifiant d’être anti-sexe, trop moralistes, essentialistes et étatistes. Les théoriciens et théoriciennes féministes ont rejeté la théorie homosexuelle la qualifiant d’être pro-sexe sans esprit critique et dangereusement protectrice du domaine privé. Malheureusement, ces descriptions réductionnistes de ce qui constitue une pléthore d’approches théoriques aux questions de sexe, de genre et de sexualité qui sont diverses, éclectiques et qui se chevauchent manquent fréquemment de tenir compte de circonstances où ces approches méthodologiques convergent sur des projets légaux visant à faire avancer les intérêts juridiques complexes des femmes et des minorités sexuelles. Une décision récente de la Cour de justice de l’Ontario portant sur un litige en droit de la famille entre trois parents et impliquant des parties homosexuelles et lesbiennes démontre pourquoi la reconnaissance des convergences entre les théories juridiques féministes et homosexuelles peut faire avancer à la fois les projets légaux homosexuels et féministes. Le but de cet article n’est pas de suggérer qu’une seule «théorie juridique féministe homosexuelle» convergente soit possible, ou même désirable. Plutôt, le but est de démontrer, par le biais d’interprétations différentes et convergentes de ce cas qui s’inspirent de certaines intuitions théoriques présentées dans une nouvelle anthologie intitulée Feminist and Queer Legal Theory, une proposition assez simple. La proposition avancée ici est que les activistes, les avocats, les parties à un litige et les juges sont tous bien servis en abordant des problèmes légaux complexes au sujet de sexe, de sexualité et de genre avec autant de «méthodes» que possible pour considérer la justice dans tous ses détails.

The Oxford Handbook of Queer Cinema

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Television Programs ◽  
Cultural Productions ◽  
Queer Cinema ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cross Dressing ◽  
And Gender

Queer media is not one thing but an ensemble of at least four moving variables: history, gender and sexuality, geography, and medium. Although many scholars would pinpoint the early 1990s as marking the emergence of a cinematic movement in the United States (dubbed by B. Ruby Rich the “new queer cinema”), films and television programs that clearly spoke to LGBTQ themes and viewers existed at many different historical moments and in many different forms: cross-dressing, same-sex attraction, comedic drag performance; at some points, for example, in 1950s television, these were not undercurrents but very prominent aspects of mainstream cultural production. Addressing “history” not as dots on a progressive spectrum but as an uneven story of struggle, the writers in this volume stress that queer cinema did not appear miraculously at one moment but arrived on currents throughout the century-long history of the medium. Likewise, while queer is an Anglophone term that has been widely circulated, it by no means names a unified or complete spectrum of sexuality and gender identity, just as the LGBTQ+ alphabet soup struggles to contain the distinctive histories, politics, and cultural productions of trans artists and genderqueer practices. Across the globe, media-makers have interrogated identity and desire through the medium of cinema through rubrics that sometimes vigorously oppose the Western embrace of the pejorative term queer, foregrounding instead indigenous genders and sexualities or those forged in the Global South or those seeking alternative epistemologies. Finally, though “cinema” is in our title, many scholars in this collection see this term as an encompassing one, referencing cinema and media in a convergent digital environment. The lively and dynamic conversations introduced here aspire to sustain further reflection as “queer cinema” shifts into new configurations.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Melissa J. Homestead
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
New Hampshire ◽  
Creative Process ◽  
History Of Sexuality ◽  
History Of

Using Cather and Lewis’s shared gravesite in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, as a touchstone, the introduction describes how biographers have approached the question of Willa Cather’s sexuality, how critics have applied queer theory to readings of her work, and how Lewis’s place in Cather’s life and creative process has been repeatedly ignored or misrepresented. The introduction lays out the terms on which this volume defines Lewis’s relationship with Cather and makes her visible again: it introduces Lewis’s role as Cather’s editor and suggests how models of the history of sexuality have failed to capture the persistence of the so-called Boston marriage into the twentieth century.

Queering College Student Retention

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 544-566 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Michael Denton
Keyword(s):  
College Student ◽  
Student Retention ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Campus Climate ◽  
Institutional Transformation ◽  
College Student Retention ◽  
Psychological Traits ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Retention Theory

Retention literature and concepts warrant examination through the lens of queer theory, a poststructural body of thought about sexuality and gender, to understand their implications for queer students. Five themes found in the retention literature are addressed from a queer perspective: framing retention as an economic and labor problem; campus climate; the focus on programs, policies, and services; psychological traits; and positivistic approaches. Queering retention involves deconstructing retention binaries; problematizing the production of normative subjects through retention theory; focusing on institutional transformation; and examining retention as heteronormative domination. Queer failure and futurity are offered as possible new frames for retention. This essay seeks to raise questions, tensions, and complexities with no clear or simple solutions. Tentative and limited implications for practice and research are offered; however, they raise more questions than provide answers.

scholarly journals Gendering Ottoman Labor History: The Cibali Régie Factory in the Early Twentieth Century

2009 ◽  
Vol 54 (S17) ◽  
pp. 45-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gülhan Balsoy
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Labor History ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Shop Floor ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Conceptual Tool ◽  
Sexual Division Of Labor ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender

SummaryThis article examines the “mutual distancing” between Ottoman labor history and women’s and gender history. For this purpose, I first summarize the scholarship produced by each field and scrutinize the ways in which both fields have remained unresponsive toward one another. I then offer a specific way to make women visible to labor history in the particular setting of the Cibali Régie Factory in the early decades of the twentieth century. Using photographic images of the factory and an approach which applies gender as a conceptual tool of historical analysis, I discuss the social conditions of work, the sexual division of labor, and the channels through which power structures were established in the Cibali factory. This study does not claim to present a comprehensive history of labor in the Ottoman Empire; my goal is rather to make women visible to labor history, to remind one that women were present on the shop floor, and to discuss how the available sources can be interpreted in gendered ways. In that sense, this article challenges the mainstream of Ottoman labor history, and seeks to answer the question as to why the female workers who appear in the photographs, in archival documents, and in other sources have so far remained largely invisible in the historiography.

Crossing borders in transnational gender history

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Keyword(s):  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Transnational History ◽  
Multiple Perspectives ◽  
Gender History ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
Matter Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
And Migration ◽  
New Research

AbstractTransnational history and the history of gender and sexuality have both been concerned with the issue of borders and their crossing, but the two fields themselves have not intersected much in the past. This is beginning to change, and this article surveys recent scholarship that draws on both fields, highlighting work in six areas: movements for women’s and gay rights; diverse understandings of sexuality and gender; colonialism and imperialism; intermarriage; national identity and citizenship; and migration. This new research suggests ways in which the subject matter, theory, and methodology in transnational history and the history of gender and sexuality can interconnect: in the two fields’ mutual emphasis on intertwinings, relationships, movement, and hybridity; their interdisciplinarity and stress on multiple perspectives; and their calls for destabilization of binaries.

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