Writer, artist, Manhattan gallery owner, and co-editor of the "Little Review," Jane Heap was one of the most dynamic figures of the international avant garde, creating a life that defined the "modernist experience" as a syncretic one. Deliberately seeking a low profile throughout her life, Heap has frustrated many scholars interested in her personal life and the extraordinarily vital period in which she lived. Through her correspondence, Heap here reveals her intimate self as well as her more public, creative relationships with some of the legends of modern art, literature, and spirituality. Focusing primarily on the voluminous letters written by Heap to Florence Reynolds, the correspondence included in this volume spans the years from 1908-1949, incorporating additional illuminating letters to Reynolds from other significant figures in Heap's life.

Heap's letters reveal the radical transformation of a dreamy, young Midwestern woman into a forceful, sophisticated arbiter of international modernism and provide rare insight into the struggle for lesbian identity and community during the inter-war period. They detail her eventual abandonment of art in the search for the transcendent in the seductive and esoteric mysticism of George Gurdjieff. Holly Baggett's accompanying essay further highlights the boldness of Jane Heap's aesthetics and life.

As a gay youth, author Holland Cedric Peyton sought role models for long-term relationships, but found that contemporary society offered only heterosexual examples. As an adult, Peyton embarked on an ambitious research project to locate and interview long-time homosexual partners. In this book, he presents their stories, ideas, and advice regarding love and maintaining a positive, long-term relationship.

Peyton interviewed ten male couples who have been together for a minimum of thirty to more than forty years. In each section, you'll get to know the couples, how they met, and how they achieved longevity in their relationships. Perhaps most importantly, each couple provides insight by answering an extensive series of questions, covering topics from self-perception, family, love, religion, and friendships, to tolerance, celebrations, and children.

These couples' extraordinarily candid interviews are a terrific way to honor their personal relationships and help young gays learn how to live a long, married life with someone they love. Together, Peyton and these couples, who opened their hearts and their lives, take on a large, important task: to provide personal, tangible, relatable relationship role models for gay youth.

"Unhistorical Shakespeare" argues that the way in which we study history has significant bearing on what desire we study, and how we study it. Menon argues that our embrace of difference as the template for relating past and present produces a hetero temporality in which chronology determines identity. In turn, such an understanding of history fixes sexual identity as the domain of the present and relegates nebulous desire to a thing of the past. In contrast to this temporal-sexual reification, "Unhistorical Shakespeare" outlines the idea of homohistory, which questions the fundamental historicist assumptions of teleology, facticity, citation, origins, and authenticity to lay bare their investments in compulsory hetero temporality.

Using the 1977 campaign against the Dade County Florida gay rights ordinance as a focal point, this book provides an examination of the emergence of the modern lesbian and gay American movement, the challenges it posed to the accepted American notions of sexuality, and how American society reacted in turn.

Veganism is so much more than what we eat. It's about striving to live an ethical life in a profoundly unethical world. Is being vegan difficult or is it now easier than ever? What does veganism have to do with wider struggles for social justice - feminism, LGBTQ+ politics, anti-racism and environmentalism?

Exploring the relationship between class, sexuality and social exclusion, this is an original study of women who identify themselves as working-class and lesbian, highlighting the significance of class and sexuality in their biographies, everyday lives and identities. It provides insight into the experiences of self-identified working-class lesbians and offers a timely critique of queer theory and an empirical interrogation of the embodied, spatial and material intersection of class and sexuality.

"Russell's data is moving and powerful, and I would expect this book to become an essential referent for gay rights activists in the future."
--"SIGNS"

When, in 1992, the citizens of Colorado ratified Amendment 2, effectively stripping lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals of protection from discrimination under the state's constitution, the vote divided the state and left the gay population disspirited and angry. Their psychological predicament offered an opportunity to examine the precise intersection at which the individual meets social oppression.

Voted Out is the first to document the psychological impact of anti-gay legislation on the gay community, illustrating the range of reactions, from depression, anger, and anxiety to a sense of empowerment and a desire to mobilize, which such legislation can engender. It also offers a detailed account of an innovative team approach to the qualitative coding and analysis process. Blending traditional quantitative methods with more innovative qualitative analyses, it provides a valuable opportunity to compare quantitative and qualitative data focused on the same issue within one volume.

The volume specifically addresses researchers' use of the results of their research beyond publication and the ways in which research undertaken to examine a social issue can be returned to the community.

This volume explores the construction of identities within a lesbian group, outlining interactive tactics used in the production of mutually-negotiated norms of authenticity. Using ethnography and discourse analysis, a range of group-specific personae are revealed to be continually reworked and reproduced within the women's interaction.

The voices in this book come from the stories of gay and lesbian partners who talk about their struggles over the years in building a life together. The stories reach beyond the obvious realities of sexual orientation to speak to the joys, sorrows, hopes, and fears of human beings who are committed to making their relationships work. Based on a life-span perspective, in-depth interviews of people whose relationships have lasted more than 15 years explored how partners adapted over the years. Each interview consisted of questions that focused upon dimensions of these relationships over time from the unique perspective of each partner. They were asked about conflict over the years, decision-making styles, ways of working out roles, the importance of social supports, and sexual and psychological intimacy. The research upon which the book is based has continuity with the authors' earlier work on lasting relationships among heterosexual couples, including Lasting Marriages: Men and Women Growing Together (Praeger, 1995). Compared to marriages, relatively little research has been done on the development of same sex relationships. This book will be of great interest to all researchers and students of gender differences, marriage and family therapy, human sexuality, and interpersonal relationships.

Winner of the 2007 Ruth Benedict Award! A unique collection of writings by both academic and activist scholars on women's same-sex sexualities and female masculinities in a globalizing Asia. Through richly detailed studies, contributors explore the emergence of contemporary lesbian and butch/femme relationships and communities throughout Asia and their location within the context of nationalist struggles, religious fundamentalism, state gender regimes, and global queer movements.

The Right to be Parents is the first book to provide a detailed history of how LGBT parents have turned to the courts to protect and defend their relationships with their children. Carlos A. Ball chronicles the stories of LGBT parents who, in seeking to gain legal recognition of and protection for their relationships with their children, have fundamentally changed how American law defines and regulates parenthood. To this day, some courts are still not able to look beyond sexual orientation and gender identity in cases involving LGBT parents and their children. Yet on the whole, Ball's stories are of progress and transformation: as a result of these pioneering LGBT parent litigants, the law is increasingly recognizing the wide diversity in American familial structures.

"This book is a succinct, pedagogically designed introduction. As classroom text, Sullivan's work is heady with vibrant debate and slim heuristics; her intellectual clarity is stunning."
--"Choice"

A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory explores the ways in which sexuality, subjectivity and sociality have been discursively produced in various historical and cultural contexts.

The book begins by putting gay and lesbian sexuality and politics in historical context and demonstrates how and why queer theory emerged in the West in the late twentieth century. Sullivan goes on to provide a detailed overview of the complex ways in which queer theory has been employed, covering a diversity of key topics including: race, sadomasochism, straight sex, fetishism, community, popular culture, transgender, and performativity. Each chapter focuses on a distinct issue or topic, provides a critical analysis of the specific ways in which it has been responded to by critics (including Freud, Foucault, Derrida, Judith Butler, Jean-Luc Nancy, Adrienne Rich and Laura Mulvey), introduces key terms, and uses contemporary cinematic texts as examples.

Although the LGBT movement has made rapid gains in the United States, LGBT people continue to face discrimination in faith communities. In this book, sociologist Jonathan S. Coley documents why and how student activists mobilize for greater inclusion at Christian colleges and universities. Drawing on interviews with student activists at a range of Christian institutions of higher learning, Coley shows that students, initially drawn to activism because of their own political, religious, or LGBT identities, are forming direct action groups that transform university policies, educational groups that open up campus dialogue, and solidarity groups that facilitate their members' personal growth. He also shows how these LGBT activists apply their skills and values after graduation in subsequent political campaigns, careers, and family lives, potentially serving as change agents in their faith communities for years to come. Coley's findings shed light on a new frontier of LGBT activism and challenge prevailing wisdom about the characteristics of activists, the purpose of activist groups, and ultimately the nature of activism itself. For more information about this project's research methodology and theoretical grounding, please visit http://jonathancoley.com/book

Raffalovich's 1896 magnum opus of sexology, Uranism and Unisexuality (never before translated into English until now), provides an ethical justification for same-sex desire. Drawing on cross-cultural and transhistorical narratives, the gentleman scholar argues for the rights of the homosexual in society and its responsibility to him.

Can reading make us better citizens? In Crossing borders and queering citizenship, Feghali crafts a sophisticated theoretical framework to theorise how the act of reading can contribute to the queering of contemporary citizenship in North America. Providing sensitive and convincing readings of work by both popular and niche authors, including Gloria Anzaldua, Dorothy Allison, Gregory Scofield, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Erin Moure, Junot Diaz, and Yann Martel, this book is the first to not only read these authors together, but also to discuss how each powerfully resists the exclusionary work of state-sanctioned citizenship in the U.S. and Canada. This book convincingly draws connections between queer theory, citizenship studies, and border studies and sheds light on how these connections can reframe our understanding of American Studies. -- .

Since the Cuban revolution in 1959, male homosexuality has been a controversial aspect of Cuban society. In this account of homosexual life, Ian Lumsden explores the treatment of male homosexuality under Castro within the framework of pre-revolution prejudices and preconceptions. This first-hand report links the cultural history and current erosion of traditional machismo, the correlation between traditional women's roles and the relationships between gay men, and homosexuality as defined by the law and as presented in typical sex education. From the international controversy over state-imposed sanatoriums for HIV/AIDS patients, to the underground gay social scene, to the issues affecting gay life and family ties, Lumsden sheds light on a little-known and misunderstood aspect of modern Cuban society.

Exploring the implications of the internet and bio-technologies for intimate and sexual life, this book discusses the concept of citizenship in relation to the extension of public health through the internet, and reveals concerns that sexually transmitted infections and HIV are associated with such technologies.

This could be the most controversial book yet in the Contemporary Issues Series. Its balanced approach could risk the wrath of advocates and critics alike, offering powerful essays on four key issues: the causes of homosexuality, disputes about the role the courts should play, gays and the military, and religious attitudes toward homosexuality.

This innovative and adventurous work, now in paperback, uses broadly feminist and postmodernist modes of analysis to explore what motivates damaging attitudes and practices towards disability. The book argues for the significance of the psycho-social imaginary and suggests a way forward in disability's queering of normative paradigms.

Men Can Wear Dresses Too is an engaging, compelling and challenging account of my life as catie maye a heterosexual male to female cross dresser. However it is not just another story about a 'guy in a dress'. This book is totally unique, in that, unlike any other work in this genre it not only describes a very personal, engaging and sometime traumatic life journey but essentially incorporates the results of the most influential cross dressing surveys carried out in modern times. The results are integrated, reviewed and fully explained within the story to support and Validate the events of my life, to challenge social opinion and ultimately to destroy many of the erroneous myths that surround those men who cross dress.