The weather in Moscow is good, there's no cholera, there's also no lesbian love...Brrr Remembering those persons of whom you write me makes me nauseous as if I'd eaten a rotten sardine. Moscow doesn't have them--and that's marvellous." -Anton Chekhov, writing to his publisher in 1895 Chekhov's barbed comment suggests the climate in which Sophia Parnok was writing, and is an added testament to to the strength and confidence with which she pursued both her personal and artistic life. Author of five volumes of poetry, and lover of Marina Tsvetaeva, Sophia Parnok was the only openly lesbian voice in Russian poetry during the Silver Age of Russian letters. Despite her unique contribution to modern Russian lyricism however, Parnok's life and work have essentially been forgotten. Parnok was not a political activist, and she had no engagement with the feminism vogueish in young Russian intellectual circles. From a young age, however, she deplored all forms of male posturing and condescension and felt alienated from what she called patriarchal virtues. Parnok's approach to her sexuality was equally forthright. Accepting lesbianism as her natural disposition, Parnok acknowledged her relationships with women, both sexual and non-sexual, to be the centre of her creative existence. Diana Burgin's extensively researched life of Parnok is deliberately woven around the poet's own account, visible in her writings. The book is divided into seven chapters, which reflect seven natural divisions in Parnok's life. This lends Burgin's work a particular poetic resonance, owing to its structural affinity with one of Parnok's last and greatest poetic achievements, the cycle of love lyrics Ursa Major. Dedicated to her last lover, Parnok refers to this cycle as a seven-star of verses, after the seven stars that make up the constellation. Parnok's poems, translated here for the first time in English, added to a wealth of biographical material, make this book a fascinating and lyrical account of an important Russian poet. Burgin's work is essential reading for students of Russian literature, lesbian history and women's studies. Diana Lewis Burgin is Professor of Russian and Chair of the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and an Associate of the Russian Research Centre, Harvard University. She is author of a biography in verse, numerous articles on Russian literature, and a translator of Russian prose and poetry.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

"This voice and timely book addresses the perceptual split between an officially 'colorblind' world and the lived experience of so many for whom race determines so much. Although centered on images of black men, these extraordinary essays provide compelling insights about stereotypes of women, whiteness, class status, ethnicity, and gender. From 'suspect profile' to 'natural athlete, ' the disuniting effects of racial cliches are meticulously analyzed in this sharp and always moving anthology."
"--Patricia J. Williams, Author of The Rooster's Egg and The Alchemy of Race and Rights"

"This exciting anthology breaks new ground in the battle to end misogyny and sexism. It gathers for the first time the diverse and eloquent voices of black men -- many of them speaking out as feminists for a revitalized vision of feminism. This unique collection offers insights, perspectives rarely heard, and tremendous hope. It is required reading for all who care about the intersection of race, gender, class and sexuality."
"--Urvashi Vaid, Director of the Policy Institute of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force and author of Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation"

In late 1995, the Million Man March drew hundreds of thousands of black men to Washington, DC, and seemed even to skeptics a powerful sign not only of black male solidarity, but also of black racial solidarity. Yet while generating a sense of community and common purpose, the Million Man March, with its deliberate exclusion of women and implicit rejection of black gay men, also highlighted one of the central faultlines in African American politics: the role of gender and sexuality in antiracist agenda.

In this groundbreaking anthology, a companion to the highly successful "Critical Race Feminism," Devon Carbado changes the terms of the debate over racism, gender, and sexuality in black America. The essays cover such topics as the legal construction of black male identity, domestic abuse in the black community, the enduring power of black machismo, the politics of black male/white female relationships, racial essentialism, the role of black men in black women's quest for racial equality, and the heterosexist nature of black political engagement.

Featuring work by Cornel West, Huey Newton, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., Houston Baker, Marlon T. Riggs, Dwight McBride, Michael Awkward, Ishmael Reed, Derrick Bell, and many others, Devon Carbado's anthology stakes out new territory in the American racial landscape.
"--Critical America, A series edited by Richard Delgado and Jean Stephancic.

2013 Finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards, LGBT Studies category Barton argues that conventional Southern manners and religious institutions provide a foundation for homophobia in the Bible Belt In the Bible Belt, it's common to see bumper stickers that claim One Man + One Woman = Marriage, church billboards that command one to "Get right with Jesus," letters to the editor comparing gay marriage to marrying one's dog, and nightly news about homophobic attacks from the Family Foundation. While some areas of the Unites States have made tremendous progress in securing rights for gay people, Bible Belt states lag behind. Not only do most Bible Belt gays lack domestic partner benefits, lesbians and gay men can still be fired from some places of employment in many regions of the Bible Belt for being a homosexual. In Pray the Gay Away, Bernadette Barton argues that conventions of small town life, rules which govern Southern manners, and the power wielded by Christian institutions serve as a foundation for both passive and active homophobia in the Bible Belt. She explores how conservative Christian ideology reproduces homophobic attitudes and shares how Bible Belt gays negotiate these attitudes in their daily lives. Drawing on the remarkable stories of Bible Belt gays, Barton brings to the fore their thoughts, experiences and hard-won insights to explore the front lines of our national culture war over marriage, family, hate crimes, and equal rights. Pray the Gay Away illuminates their lives as both foot soldiers and casualties in the battle for gay rights.

'This book is unique in setting the question of homosexuality in its historical, legal, political, and religious contexts in North America. It is no longer possible in Catholic ethics to address sexual morality with a model of absolute moral norms, immune from the ambiguities and complexities social justice issues introduce. Peddicord looks at the personal and social sides of homosexuality, and fairly examines all sides of the Roman Catholic response.' --Lisa Sowle Cahill, Boston College

Proud, happy, grateful-gay youth describe their lives in terms that would have seemed surprising only a generation ago. Yet many adults, including parents, seem skeptical about this sea change in perceptions and attitudes. Even in an age of growing tolerance, coming out as gay is supposed to involve a crisis or struggle. This is the kind of thinking, say the young men at the heart of this book, that needs to change. Becoming Who I Am is an astute exploration of identity and sexuality as told by today's generation of gay young men. Through a series of in-depth interviews with teenagers and men in their early 20s, Ritch Savin-Williams reflects on how the life stories recorded here fulfill the promise of an affirmative, thriving gay identity outlined in his earlier book, The New Gay Teenager. He offers a contemporary perspective on gay lives viewed across key milestones: from dawning awareness of same-sex attraction to first sexual encounters; from the uncertainty and exhilaration of coming out to family and friends to the forming of adult romantic relationships; from insights into what it means to be gay today to musings on what the future may hold. The voices hail from diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, but as gay men they share basic experiences in common, conveyed here with honesty, humor, and joy.

In this new full-length study of Jane Rule's life and work, Marilyn Schuster argues that Rule's novels provide a way of "writing and reading lesbian" that resists and subverts dominant discourses of gender and sexuality-both those of mainstream culture and of political and sexual subcultures.

From her earliest novel, " Desert of the Heart" (1964), Rule's fiction has provided a challenge to the concept of a fixed identity and to the identity politics founded on such a concept. Incorporating all of Jane Rule's early work-including unpublished manuscripts, letters, magazine and newspaper columns, as well as fan mail she received-Schuster also draws on interviews, conversations, and personal encounters with the author to elicit the ways in which Rule interrogates the meanings and politics of sexuality, the relationship between sexuality and language, and the stakes of communities in individual claims on identity.

Passionate Communities is a thorough, engaging, and long-overdue study of an important voice in lesbian literature and gay and lesbian politics.

In Solidarity: Friendship, Family, and Activism Beyond Gay and Straight shows what being an ally (in this case to LGBTQ+ persons and communities) requires, means, and does. Through prose, poetry, performance text, and film, the work takes readers inside relationships across sexual orientation and serves as an exemplar of activist scholarship. In Solidarity makes a unique and compelling contribution to courses on LGBTQ+ studies, sexualities, gender, identity, relationships, or the family.

"Heroic Desire" performs its title--bold, challenging, seductive, and compelling--a vital and exciting addition to the discourse on lesbian identities, their dissolves and perpetual becomings. Sure to incite and inspire."
--Lynda Hart, Author of "Fatal Women: Lesbian Sexuality and the Mark of Aggression"

"Right on the edge of exciting and daring new writing on lesbian representation. Moving beyond post- modernism's rejection of identity politics, Munt draws on a wealth of scholarship and personal reflection to refigure the heroic narrative in the service of lesbian liberation strategies. A thoughtful and thought- provoking book."
--Esther Newton, State University of New York, Purchase

"In "Heroic Desire" Sally Munt revisits identity politics through the figure of the lesbian hero. The result is one of the most exciting works of lesbian theory to appear in years. Written in a strong and engaging personal voice, "Heroic Desire" will excite, provoke, enlighten, and entertain the reader with this original insights into questions of lesbian identity, culture, and community."
--Bonnie Zimmerman, San Diego State University

This volume showcases cutting-edge research in the linguistic and discursive study of masculinities, comprising the first significant edited collection on language and masculinities since Johnson and Meinhof's 1997 volume. Overall, the chapters are linked together by a critical analytical perspective that seeks to understand the relationships between discourse, masculinities, and power. Whereas some of the chapters offer detailed, linguistically informed critiques of the ways in which old and new expressions of masculinities are complicit in the reproduction of men's hegemonic positions of power, others provide a more complex picture, one in which collusion and subversion go hand in hand. Contributions argue for the need for research on language and masculinities to expand its remit so as to engage with "gay masculinities," and unsettle gendered categories in order to consider the ways in which women, transgender, and intersex individuals also perform a variety of masculinities. Finally, unlike Johnson and Meinhof's 1997 collection, this volume not only offers a wider-and perhaps "queerer" perspective-on the study of language and masculinities, but also covers a broader geographical and socio-cultural spectrum, including work on Brazil, Israel, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Africa.

Television has historically been largely ineffective at representing queerness in its various forms. In the 21st century, however, as same-sex couples have seen increasing mainstream acceptance, and a broader range of queer characters has appeared in the media, it seems natural to assume TV portrayals of queerness have become more enlightened. But have they? This collection of fresh essays analyzes queerness as depicted on TV from 2000 to the present. Examining Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The L Word, Modern Family, The New Normal, Queer as Folk, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, RuPaul's Drag Race, Spartacus and Will & Grace, among others, the contributors demonstrate that queer characters in general have achieved visibility at the expense of minimizing much of their queerness-with a few eye-opening exceptions.

What did gay men do in women's liberation-and vice-versa? This book offers the first systematic investigation of the question. Conventional wisdom has offered varied and contradictory stories: Gay men were misogynistic enemies of feminism; feminist women were homophobic or androphobic; feminist women and gay men collaborated only during the 1960s-1970s liberation moment; lesbians rushed in to work with gay men during the AIDS crisis. Examined for the first time in this book, their stories are much more complex, yesterday and today. Feminist women and gay men have had dynamic relations in popular thinking and historic practice, including commonality, opposition, and intellectual contributions. Written by a feminist-identified gay man, this book forges an examination of these two groups' alliances and obstacles over the past 50 years, as well as their communications of, between, and about each other. What have been the received views of how these groups have or have not worked together politically? What historical evidence supports, contradicts, or complicates these views? New findings help illuminate understandings of the past and present of US women's and LGBTQ movements, as well as broader relations between social movements in general. With a special focus on neglected areas of research, such as the US South, it also argues for how these social movements shaped ideas about what it means to be gay and/or feminist. This book is suitable in whole or excerpt for classes in LGBTQ studies, women's studies, feminist theory, social movements, American studies, and US history.

Drawing on over a decade of ethnographic fieldwork in northwest China, Casey James Miller offers a novel, compelling, and intimately personal perspective on Chinese queer culture and activism. In Inside the Circle: Queer Culture and Activism in Northwest China, Miller tells the stories of two courageous and dedicated groups of queer activists in the city of Xi’an: a grassroots gay men’s HIV/AIDS organization called Tong’ai and a lesbian women’s group named UNITE. Taking inspiration from “the circle,” a term used to imagine local, national, and global queer communities, Miller shows how everyday people in northwest China are taking part in queer culture and activism while also striving to lead traditionally moral lives in a rapidly changing society. The queer stories in this book broaden our understandings of gender and sexuality in contemporary China and show how taking global queer diversity seriously requires us to de-center Western cultural values, historical experiences, and theoretical perspectives.

When Goethe christened the 1700's "the Century of Winckelmann" and Kant dubbed it "the Century of Frederick the Great," they invoked two notorious figures in gay history. This collection of twelve essays reclaims "the Age of Goethe"--To call upon a literary designation of roughly the same period - as a time when same-sex erotic attraction suffused artistic production from Winckelmann's art treatises and Goethe's plays to Friedrich Schlegel's self-reflexive novel Lucinde and Kleist's letters.
This volume employs historical, biographical, and textual evidence to paint a cohesive picture of the incontrovertibly sexual nature of male-male and female-female relationships in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Germany. The literature of this era bequeathed to us the cultural inventions of Romantic love, classical femininity, the marriage partnership, and the aesthetics of beauty - all, as this volume demonstrates, via and despite the ever-resurgent erotic desire for one's own sex. In the process, it offers radically new readings of canonical authors - including Wieland, Lenz, Goethe, Friedrich Schlegel, and Kleist -- in light of the eroticized same-sex relations in their works.

First Published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

To find more information about Rowman and Littlefield titles, please visit www.rowmanlittlefield.com.

Queer Representations celebrates the eclectic, diverse nature of gay and lesbian culture and its production.

The volume begins by asking how we can interpret an image--is the image homosexual and if so, how can we understand it? Closely connected to its interpretation is how we visualize homosexuality, or, in Allen Ellenzweig's term, how we picture the homoerotic, the organizing principle of a section devoted to American cinema and performance in general. The crucial role of biography and autobiography is the central preoccupation of the next section, with essays on Radclyffe Hall, Langston Hughes, and Louisa May Alcott.

Featuring many of the most respected figures in queer studies and contemporary queer literature, among them Dorothy Allison, Edmund White, Barbara Smith, Essex Hemphill, Michael Cunningham, Allen Ginsberg, Samuel R. Delany, Dale Peck, Jewelle Gomez, Joan Nestle, a final section explores the creation of queer literature, birthpangs, growing pains, and achievements.

By emphasizing the interconnectedness of gay and lesbian lives and the literature which has been instrumental in defining, reconstructing, and representing these lives, this anthology serves as a diverse introduction to queer culture and literature.

An anthology of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies's most provactive LGBT scholarship This compendious, cutting-edge volume offers a broad array of the most provocative gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender scholarship produced by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) over the first decade (1986-1996) of its existence at the CUNY Graduate School. CLAGS has had a profound and legitimizing influence on the establishment of gay and lesbian studies as a discipline. Thousands have attended its events, featuring hundreds of scholars, activists, and cultural workers; many thousands more have lamented how they would have liked to have been there. With this book, they finally, vicariously, can be. Divided into five parts-on identities as they revolve around gender and sexuality; on the terrains of homosexual history; on mind-body relations; on laws and economics; and on policy issues related to gay youth, AIDS, and aging-A Queer World offers a compelling panorama of gay and lesbian life. Featuring the work, among others, of such figures as Yukiko Hanawa, Will Roscoe, Jewelle L. Gomez, Jonathan Ned Katz, Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, Jeffrey Escoffier, Janice M. Irvine, Kendall Thomas, Gilbert Herdt, Vivien Ng, Douglas Crimp, Walt Odets, Serena Nanda, Cindy Patton, Michael Moon, William Byne, and Randolph Trumback, A Queer World is distinctive in its focus on the social sciences and issues relating to public policy. Consisting largely of previously unpublished essays, this volume-and its companion volume Queer Representations: Reading Lives, Reading Cultures-is an invaluable addition to the bookshelf of anyone interested in the study of sexuality.

According to David Halperin, sexuality in our time is typified by a "crisis in contemporary sexual definition." What is sexuality? What does it mean to have a sexual identity or orientation? What is the relationship between sexuality as a knowledge construct, on one hand, and the often messy flows of desire and practices of love, on the other? How and why are some sexual, erotic, and intimate practices normalized and others marginalized?

Queer Theory has emerged in the West as one of the most provocative analytical tools in the humanities and social sciences. It scrutinizes identity and social structures that take heteronormativity for granted that do not question the social construction of heterosexuality as normative in relation to its oppositional binary, homosexuality. At the same time, bisexuality is a practice, identity, and orientation that challenges the binary logic around which cultural notions of sexuality are organized. It is a portal to the imagination of a world of amorous expression beyond that divide.

This provocative collection presents bisexuality and queer theory as two parallel thought collectives that have made significant contributions to cultural discourses about sexual and amorous practices since the onset of the AIDS era, and explores the ideas that circulate in these thought collectives today. We learn much about the construction and experience of sexuality, and the power it still holds throughout the contemporary Western world to shape identities and practices. This volume challenges our understanding of what it means to be sexual, to have a sexual identity, and to practise the arts of loving.

This book was orginally published as a special issue of the Journal of Bisexuality."

A lyrical and meticulously researched mapping of the ways in which diverse societies have shaped female same-sex sexuality across time and geograhy From the ancient poet Sappho to tombois in contemporary Indonesia, women throughout history and around the globe have desired, loved, and had sex with other women. In beautiful prose, Sapphistries tells their stories, capturing the multitude of ways that diverse societies have shaped female same-sex sexuality across time and place. Leila J. Rupp reveals how, from the time of the very earliest societies, the possibility of love between women has been known, even when it is feared, ignored, or denied. We hear women in the sex-segregated spaces of convents and harems whispering words of love. We see women beginning to find each other on the streets of London and Amsterdam, in the aristocratic circles of Paris, in the factories of Shanghai. We find women's desire and love for women meeting the light of day as Japanese schoolgirls fall in love, and lesbian bars and clubs spread from 1920s Berlin to 1950s Buffalo. And we encounter a world of difference in the twenty-first century, as transnational concepts and lesbian identities meet local understandings of how two women might love each other. Giving voice to words from the mouths and pens of women, and from men's prohibitions, reports, literature, art, imaginings, pornography, and court cases, Rupp also creatively employs fiction to imagine possibilities when there is no historical evidence. Sapphistries combines lyrical narrative with meticulous historical research, providing an eminently readable and uniquely sweeping story of desire, love, and sex between women around the globe from the beginning of time to the present.

Lesbian Sexuality has remained largely ignored in Japan despite increasing exposure of disadvantaged minority groups, including gay men. This book is the first comprehensive academic exploration of contemporary lesbian sexuality in Japanese society. The author employs an interdisciplinary approach and this book will be of great value to those working or interested in the areas of Japanese, lesbian and gender studies as well as Japanese history, anthropology and cultural studies.

In Feminist, Queer, Crip Alison Kafer imagines a different future for disability and disabled bodies. Challenging the ways in which ideas about the future and time have been deployed in the service of compulsory able-bodiedness and able-mindedness, Kafer rejects the idea of disability as a pre-determined limit. She juxtaposes theories, movements, and identities such as environmental justice, reproductive justice, cyborg theory, transgender politics, and disability that are typically discussed in isolation and envisions new possibilities for crip futures and feminist/queer/crip alliances. This bold book goes against the grain of normalization and promotes a political framework for a more just world.

The first book to focus on clinical work with lesbians and gays in family relationships

This groundbreaking resource provides you with a wealth of fascinating research and case examples, as well as recommAndations and suggestions for working with gay couples and families.

Joan Laird and Robert-Jay Green have gathered a distinguished panel of practitioners to create this comprehensive collection. The contributors address the experiences of lesbians and gay men as couples and as parents?and examine their relationships with the families in which they were raised.

Men I've Never Been recounts Michael Sadowski's odyssey as a boy who shuns his own identity-and, ultimately, his sexual orientation-in order to become who he thinks he's supposed to be. Beginning with the memory of a four-year-old sitting in a dingy dive bar, sounding out newspaper headlines while his boasting father collects drinks from onlookers, each chapter highlights a different image of manhood that Sadowski saw at home, at school, or on television-from sports heroes, hunters, and game show hosts to his charismatic but hard-drinking father. As he learns not to talk, laugh, cry, or love, he retreats further behind a stoic mask of silence-outwardly well-functioning but emotionally isolated, sinking under the weight of the past. Through wrenching tragedy and tense, life-threatening challenges, Sadowski learns to find love, purpose, and healthy self-regard. In coming to understand his identity and his place within his family, he meditates on the power of real human connection and comes to grasp the damage of his troubled upbringing and the traumas caused by toxic masculinity. By turns comic and tragic, this nuanced memoir uncovers the false selves we create to get along in the world and the price we pay to maintain them.

Sexual Orientation at Work: Contemporary Issues and Perspectives brings together contemporary international research on sexual orientation and draws out its implications for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and heterosexual employees and managers. It provides new empirical and theoretical insights into sexual orientation employment discrimination and equality work in countries such as South Africa, Turkey, Australia, Austria, Canada, US and the UK.

This book is novel in its focus on how sexual orientation intersects with other aspects of difference such as age, class, ethnicity and disability. It adopts new theoretical perspectives (e.g. queer theory) to analyze the rise of new gay-friendly organizations, and examines important methodological issues in collecting socio-economic data about sexual minorities.

Providing an accessible account of key issues and perspectives on sexual orientation in the workplace, "Sexual Orientation at Work "caters to a wide range of readers across business, feminist, and LGBT/Queer Studies fields."