Notes towards the queer Asian city: Singapore and Hong Kong

Urban Studies ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 747-764 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audrey Yue ◽  
Helen Hok-Sze Leung

The last decade has witnessed the emergence and consolidation of new and established gay cities in East and Southeast Asia, in particular, the sexualisation of the Singapore city-state, the commerce-led boom of queer Bangkok, the rise of middle-class gay consumer cultures in Manila and Hong Kong, and the proliferation of underground LGBT scenes in Shanghai and Beijing. In the West, scholarships on urban gay centres such as San Francisco, New York and London focus on the paradigms of ethnicity (Sinfield, 1996), gentrification (Bell and Binnie, 2004) and creativity (Florida, 2002). Mapping the rise of commercial gay neighbourhoods by combining the history of ghettos and its post-closet geography of community villages, these studies chart a teleological model of sexual minority rights, group recognition and homonormative mainstream assimilation. Instead of defaulting to these specifically North American and European paradigms and debates, this paper attempts to formulate a different theoretical framework to understand the rise of the queer Asian city. Providing case studies on Singapore and Hong Kong, and deploying an inter-disciplinary approach including critical creative industrial studies and cultural studies this paper examines the intersections across the practices of gay clusters, urban renewal and social movement. It asks: if queer Asian sexual cultures are characterised by disjunctive modernities, how do such modernities shape their spatial geographies and produce the material specificities of each city?

1996 ◽  
Vol 70 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 309-381
Author(s):  
Redactie KITLV

-Bridget Brereton, Emilia Viotti Da Costa, Crowns of glory, tears of blood: The Demerara slave rebellion of 1823. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. xix + 378 pp.-Grant D. Jones, Assad Shoman, 13 Chapters of a history of Belize. Belize city: Angelus, 1994. xviii + 344 pp.-Donald Wood, K.O. Laurence, Tobago in wartime 1793-1815. Kingston: The Press, University of the West Indies, 1995. viii + 280 pp.-Trevor Burnard, Howard A. Fergus, Montserrat: History of a Caribbean colony. London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1994. x + 294 pp.-John L. Offner, Joseph Smith, The Spanish-American War: Conflict in the Caribbean and the Pacific, 1895-1902. London: Longman, 1994. ix + 262 pp.-Louis Allaire, John M. Weeks ,Ancient Caribbean. New York: Garland, 1994. lxxi + 325 pp., Peter J. Ferbel (eds)-Aaron Segal, Hilbourne A. Watson, The Caribbean in the global political economy. Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 1994. ix + 261 pp.-Aaron Segal, Anthony P. Maingot, The United States and the Caribbean. London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1994. xi + 260 pp.-Bill Maurer, Helen I. Safa, The myth of the male breadwinner: Women and industrialization in the Caribbean. Boulder CO: Westview, 1995. xvi + 208 pp.-Peter Meel, Edward M. Dew, The trouble in Suriname, 1975-1993. Westport CT: Praeger, 1994. xv + 243 pp.-Henry Wells, Jorge Heine, The last Cacique: Leadership and politics in a Puerto Rican city. Pittsburgh PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993. ix + 310 pp.-Susan Eckstein, Jorge F. Pérez-López, Cuba at a crossroads: Politics and economics after the fourth party congress. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994. xviii + 282 pp.-David A.B. Murray, Marvin Leiner, Sexual politics in Cuba: Machismo, homosexuality, and AIDS. Boulder CO: Westview, 1994. xv + 184 pp.-Kevin A. Yelvington, Selwyn Ryan ,Sharks and sardines: Blacks in business in Trinidad and Tobago. St. Augustine, Trinidad: Institute of social and economic studies, University of the West Indies, 1992. xiv + 217 pp., Lou Anne Barclay (eds)-Catherine Levesque, Allison Blakely, Blacks in the Dutch world: The evolution of racial imagery in a modern society. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. xix + 327 pp.-Dennis J. Gayle, Frank Fonda Taylor, 'To hell with paradise': A history of the Jamaican tourist industry. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993. ix + 239 pp.-John P. Homiak, Frank Jan van Dijk, Jahmaica: Rastafari and Jamaican society, 1930-1990. Utrecht: ISOR, 1993. 483 pp.-Peter Mason, Arthur MacGregor, Sir Hans Sloane: Collector, scientist, antiquary, founding Father of the British Museum. London: British Museum Press, 1994.-Philip Morgan, James Walvin, The life and times of Henry Clarke of Jamaica, 1828-1907. London: Frank Cass, 1994. xvi + 155 pp.-Werner Zips, E. Kofi Agorsah, Maroon heritage: Archaeological, ethnographic and historical perspectives. Kingston: Canoe Press, 1994. xx + 210 pp.-Michael Hoenisch, Werner Zips, Schwarze Rebellen: Afrikanisch-karibischer Freiheitskampf in Jamaica. Vienna Promedia, 1993. 301 pp.-Elizabeth McAlister, Paul Farmer, The uses of Haiti. Monroe ME: Common Courage Press, 1994. 432 pp.-Robert Lawless, James Ridgeway, The Haiti files: Decoding the crisis. Washington DC: Essential Books, 1994. 243 pp.-Bernadette Cailler, Michael Dash, Edouard Glissant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. xii + 202 pp.-Peter Hulme, Veronica Marie Gregg, Jean Rhys's historical imagination: Reading and writing the Creole. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. xi + 228 pp.-Silvia Kouwenberg, Francis Byrne ,Focus and grammatical relations in Creole languages. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1993. xvi + 329 pp., Donald Winford (eds)-John H. McWhorter, Ingo Plag, Sentential complementation in Sranan: On the formation of an English-based Creole language. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1993. ix + 174 pp.-Percy C. Hintzen, Madan M. Gopal, Politics, race, and youth in Guyana. San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1992. xvi + 289 pp.-W.C.J. Koot, Hans van Hulst ,Pan i rèspèt: Criminaliteit van geïmmigreerde Curacaose jongeren. Utrecht: OKU. 1994. 226 pp., Jeanette Bos (eds)-Han Jordaan, Cornelis Ch. Goslinga, Een zweem van weemoed: Verhalen uit de Antilliaanse slaventijd. Curacao: Caribbean Publishing, 1993. 175 pp.-Han Jordaan, Ingvar Kristensen, Plantage Savonet: Verleden en toekomst. Curacao: STINAPA, 1993, 73 pp.-Gerrit Noort, Hesdie Stuart Zamuel, Johannes King: Profeet en apostel in het Surinaamse bosland. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 1994. vi + 241 pp.


1982 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
David D. Mays

On Monday, October 16, 1758., Hugh Gaine reported a novelty. “Friday last,” he told his readers in the New-York Mercury, “arrived here from the West Indies, a Company of Comedians; some Part of which were here in the Year 1753.” This brief notice, which went on to assure its readers that the company had “an ample Certificate of their Private as well as publick Qualifications,” marks the beginning of the most significant event in American theatre history: the establishment of the professional theatre on this continent. The achievements of the Company of Comedians during its sixteen-year residence in North America are virtually without parallel in the history of the theatre, and have not received sufficient recognition by historians and scholars.


Author(s):  
David Faflik

Urban Formalism radically reimagines what it meant to “read” a brave new urban world during the transformative middle decades of the nineteenth century. At a time when contemporaries in the twin capitals of modernity in the West, New York and Paris, were learning to make sense of unfamiliar surroundings, city peoples increasingly looked to the experiential patterns, or forms, from their everyday lives in an attempt to translate urban experience into something they could more easily comprehend. Urban Formalism interrogates both the risks and rewards of an interpretive practice that depended on the mutual relation between urbanism and formalism, at a moment when the subjective experience of the city had reached unprecedented levels of complexity. What did it mean to read a city sidewalk as if it were a literary form, like a poem? On what basis might the material form of a burning block of buildings be received as a pleasurable spectacle? How closely aligned were the ideology and choreography of the political form of a revolutionary street protest? And what were the implications of conceiving of the city’s exciting dynamism in the static visual form of a photographic composition? These are the questions that Urban Formalism asks and begins to answer, with the aim of proposing a revisionist semantics of the city. This book not only provides an original cultural history of forms. It posits a new form of urban history, comprised of the representative rituals of interpretation that have helped give meaningful shape to metropolitan life.


1986 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 73-76
Author(s):  
Douglas Hensley

Douglas Hensley has been an active chamber musician ever since he took up serious study of the classical guitar. He received bachelor and master's degrees under the direction of David Tanenbaum from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and he has studied with many other musicians in private lessons and master classes. Over the past ten years he has premiered close to fifty new compositions, performed numerous U.S. premieres and the West Coast premiere of Elliott Carter's “Changes” for solo guitar. For Opus One Records in New York he has recorded Larry Polansky's “Hensley Variations” and David Loeb's “Trois Cansos” with flautist Kenneth Kramer and violist John Casten. He has also recorded a collection of duets with Japanese shakuhachi master Masayuka Koga, “Autumn Mist,” for Fortuna Records of Novato, California. His principal activities are as cofounder (with violist/violinist John Casten) and guitarist of the San Francisco-based contemporary performance ensemble ISKRA, which is made up of flute, clarinet, guitar, violin/viola, doublebass and soprano voice. Anyone with additional information about flute, viola, guitar trios (or other chamber music with guitar), or queries, is urged to contact him at 607-A Frederick St., San Francisco, CA 94117.


2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 611-613
Author(s):  
Avner Giladi

With the series of critical editions and studies of Arabic medical texts from the Middle Ages he has published in recent years, Gerrit Bos has made a significant contribution to the history of medicine in the Islamic world. He has dedicated special attention to the work of Abu Jaעfar Ahmad ibn Abi Khalid ibn al-Jazzar of Qayrawan, a 10th-century physician and prolific author of medical texts. Ibn al-Jazzar was famous and influential not only within his own Arabic– Islamic cultural domain but also—thanks to widely circulated translations of his works into Greek, Latin, and Hebrew—among Christian and Jewish physicians in the East as well as the West. (For Bos's publications on Ibn al-Jazzar's writings see p. 406).


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