This intriguing and authoritative book tracks stage representations of lesbians and gay men from Oscar Wilde to the present day. Alan Sinfield argues that, despite and because of censorship and discretion, twentieth-century theatre has been viewed as gay space. When we attune ourselves to the idioms of the different decades, theatre emerges as an important place for the circulation of images of homosexuality and for the exploration of concepts of gender and sexuality. Sinfield examines scores of British and American plays and playwrights, including works by Wilde, Maugham, Coward, Hellman, O'Neill, Rattigan, Williams, Le Roi Jones and Orton. He locates plays in the contexts in which they were produced and viewed, whether it be West End and Broadway or more bohemian little club theatres, Off-Broadway, and fringe. He discusses many women writers - from Djuna Barnes and Agatha Christie to Lorraine Hansberry and Caryl Churchill - and analyses the implications of homosexuality in their work.He explains why in the 1950s British and American plays began to differ in their representations of gays, how the 1960s produced an exuberant cultivation of 'kinky' humour and gay political activism in theatres, and what impact AIDS has had on theatrical productions. Sinfield concludes with provocative questions about the direction of new theatre writing, asserting that representations in theatre continue to challenge notions of our sexual potential. Alan Sinfield is professor of English literature at the University of Sussex. Among his many publications are 'Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain', 'Faultlines: Cultural Materialism and the Politics of Dissident Reading', 'The Wilde Century', and 'Cultural Politics - Queer Reading'.

Impossible Women fills a critical gap in queer theory by spotlighting representations of lesbian sexuality in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature. Reading through the lens of feminist and psychoanalytic theory, Valerie Rohy considers texts by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Kate Chopin, Henry James, Zora Neale Hurston, Ernest Hemingway, and Elizabeth Bishop.Addressing American ideologies of reproduction and representation, Impossible Women suggests that lesbian figures are made to symbolize both the unrepresentable and the failures of meaning inherent in language. Rohy traces the ways lesbian sexuality relegated to the domain of the ineffable, yet endlessly subject to inscription appears in tropes of transference and displacement, the disembodied voice, repetition-compulsion, and the uncanny. Impossible Women also asks what cultural work such figures perform, locating lesbian desire in American literary history and engaging issues of genre and narrative, social formations such as the rhetoric of the "New Woman," and intersections of racism, sexism, and homophobia."

Psychoanalytic theories of lesbian development epitomize the difficulty in liberating psychoanalysis from the past. Psychoanalytic theory has traditionally adopted a clear position that a lesbian orientation represented some form of psychological abnormality. Thankfully -- but only very recently -- some influential feminist leaders have begun to rethink issues of gender and sexual orientation, removing heterosexuality from its privileged position as normal.

In "Lesbians and Psychoanalysis, " Judith M. Glassgold and Suzanne Iasenza bring together twenty-six of these pioneers in the field of lesbian psychoanalytic theory. Through insightful chapters based on years of clinical experience, each author helps to redefine psychoanalytic theory by reinventing its foundations from an affirmative perspective so that it better represents all peoples.

"Lesbians and Psychoanalysis" addresses several topics of emerging concern including multicultural diversity, self-disclosure, homophobia, transference/countertransference issues, bisexuality, and the changing nature of lesbian sexuality. In addition, the authors examine the influence of stigma on human development. In three sections -- Past, Present, and Future -- the authors in turn critique past theory, discuss current issues in therapy, and describe new directions in theory and practice. This is a book that is sure to appeal not only to members of the psychoanalytic community but also to all those who are interested in gay and lesbian studies, feminism, and psychology.

Karla Jay's memoir of an age whose tumultuous social and political movements fundamentally reshaped American culture takes readers from her early days in the 1968 Columbia University student riots to her post-college involvement in New York radical women's groups and the New York Gay Liberation Front. In Southern California in the early 70s, she continued in the battle for gay civil rights and helped to organize the takeover of "The Ladies' Home Journal" and "ogle-in" - where women staked out Wall Street and whistled at the men.

Drawing on original research from medical texts, psychiatric case histories, pioneering statistical surveys, first-person accounts, legal cases, sensationalist journalism, and legislative debates, Jennifer Terry has written a nuanced and textured history of how the century-old obsession with homosexuality is deeply tied to changing American anxieties about social and sexual order in the modern age.
Terry's overarching argument is compelling: that homosexuality served as a marker of the "abnormal" against which malleable, tenuous, and often contradictory concepts of the "normal" were defined. One of the few histories to take into consideration homosexuality in both women and men, Terry's work also stands out in its refusal to erase the agency of people classified as abnormal. She documents the myriad ways that gays, lesbians, and other sexual minorities have coauthored, resisted, and transformed the most powerful and authoritative modern truths about sex. Proposing this history as a "useable past," "An American Obsession" is an indispensable contribution to the study of American cultural history.

Robson tackles controversial legal questions, including the treatment of lesbian criminal defendants; lesbianism and violence; the courts' tendency to resort to stereotypes, such as "the good lesbian" and "the bad lesbian"; the numerous debates enveloping same-sex marriage; and the outcome of child custody cases involving lesbians. She also repudiates the recent habit of legal theorists to address lesbians as "alternative family."

This resource for counselors who work with lesbian couples gives a clear assessment of the issues faced in working through their relationship within the context of their sexuality and society's oppression of lesbians.

The purpose of the Counseling and Pastoral Theology series is to address clinical issues that arise among particular populations currently neglected in the literature on pastoral care and counseling. This series is committed to enhancing both the theoretical base and the clinical expertise of pastoral caregivers by providing a pastoral theological paradigm that will inform both assessment and intervention with persons in these specific populations.

..". innovative and important thinking about the various relations between feminist theory, queer theory, and lesbian theory, as well as the possibility that liberation can be mutual rather than mutually exclusive." Lambda Book Report

"Challenging and interesting." Just Out

A collection of fifteen interdisciplinary essays examining the history, current condition, and evolving shape of lesbian alliances with U.S. feminists. Contributors explore the social and aesthetic significance of the terms "lesbian" and "feminist" with the interest of reforming and strengthening them."

Challenging widely held assumptions about postwar gay male culture and politics, Homosexuality in Cold War America examines how gay men in the 1950s resisted pressures to remain in the closet. Robert J. Corber argues that a form of gay male identity emerged in the 1950s that simultaneously drew on and transcended left-wing opposition to the Cold War cultural and political consensus. Combining readings of novels, plays, and films of the period with historical research into the national security state, the growth of the suburbs, and postwar consumer culture, Corber examines how gay men resisted the "organization man" model of masculinity that rose to dominance in the wake of World War II. By exploring the representation of gay men in film noir, Corber suggests that even as this Hollywood genre reinforced homophobic stereotypes, it legitimized the gay male "gaze." He emphasizes how film noir's introduction of homosexual characters countered the national "project" to render gay men invisible, and marked a deep subversion of the Cold War mentality. Corber then considers the work of gay male writers Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, and James Baldwin, demonstrating how these authors declined to represent homosexuality as a discrete subculture and instead promoted a model of political solidarity rooted in the shared experience of oppression. Homosexuality in Cold War America reveals that the ideological critique of the dominant culture made by gay male authors of the 1950s laid the foundation for the gay liberation movement of the following decade.

"This book demonstrates Case s continued dominance of the field of lesbian performance studies.... Case s dense, rich, and complex work very likely will be a central text for anyone interested in debating the changing theoretical landscape for performance studies and queer theory. All readers interested in what the future might hold for scholarship in the humanities should study Case s thought-provoking work, which is an essential addition to any college or university s collection." Choice

..". this is a book that is enormously provocative, that will make you think and feel connected with the latest speculation on the implications of the electronic age we inhabit." Lesbian Review of Books

..". definitely required reading for any future-thinking lesbian." Lambda Book Report

The Domain-Matrix is about the passage from print culture to electronic screen culture and how this passage affects the reader or computer user. Sections are organized to emulate, in a printed book, the reader s experience of computer windows. Case traces the portrait of virtual identities within queer and lesbian critical practice and virtual technologies."

Electroshock. Hysterectomy. Lobotomy. These are only three of the many "cures" to which lesbians have been subjected in this century. How does a society develop such a profound aversion to a particular minority? In what ways do images in the popular media perpetuate cultural stereotypes about lesbians, and to what extent have lesbians been able to subvert and revise those images? This book addresses these and other questions by examining how lesbianism has been represented in American popular culture in the twentieth century and how conflicting ideologies have shaped lesbian experiences and identity. In the first section, "Inventing the Lesbian," Sherrie A. Inness explores depictions of lesbians in popular texts aimed primarily at heterosexual consumers. She moves from novels of the 1920s to books about life at women's colleges and boarding schools, to such contemporary women's magazines as Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and Vogue. In the next section, "Forms of Resistance," Inness probes the ways in which lesbians have refashioned texts intended for a heterosexual audience or created their own narratives. One chapter shows how lesbian readers have reinterpreted the Nancy Drew mysteries, looking at them from a distinctly "queer" perspective. Another chapter addresses the changing portrayal of lesbians in children's books over the past two decades. The last section, "Writing in the Margins," scrutinizes the extent to which lesbians, themselves a marginalized group, have created a society that relegates some of its own members to the outskirts. Topics include the geographic politics of lesbianism, the complex issue of "passing," and the meaning of butch identity in twentieth-century lesbian culture.

This pioneering collection of essays explores some of the many and varied ways that women might use a particular idea of being lesbian to invent themselves, to understand how they are connected in the world, and to imagine notions of community. Focused through an anthropological lens, contributors explore a wide range of expressions that bind different lesbian communities together--from dance club culture to lesbian wedding ceremonies, from lesbian life in the 1920s to lesbian motherhood today.
As a whole, "Inventing Lesbian Cultures" in America shows how communities and identities allow for a sense of collective meaning for lesbians today. Defined in terms of culture, the activities, alliances, and identities that make up the experience of being lesbian imbue their lives with dignity and stability. "Inventing Lesbian Cultures" in America will become required reading for anyone interested in gender and sexual identity.

"Allen's work is virtually unique among American writers. Itillustrates a deep knowledge of the issues raised by the postmodernists, yet shedoes not succumb to the playing field, constructing instead her own philosophicaldirection and aesthetic." -- Sarah Hoagland

Jeffner Allenshapes a poetic politics that transforms textual and everyday realities. Thesurprising, resilient, and transformative windings of lesbian writing and lesbianlives -- a poetics of sinuous movement, the turning of women to women -- informsthese reflections.

Acclaimed for his intricate, incisive, and often controversial explorations of art, literature, and society, Leo Bersani now addresses homosexuality in America. Hardly a day goes by without the media focusing an often sympathetic beam on gay life--and, with AIDS, on gay death. Gay plays on Broadway, big book awards to authors writing on gay subjects, Hollywood movies with gay themes, gay and lesbian studies at dozens of universities, openly gay columnists and even editors at national mainstream publications, political leaders speaking in favor of gay rights: it seems that straight America has finally begun to listen to homosexual America. Still, Bersani notes, not only has homophobia grown more virulent, but many gay men and lesbians themselves are reluctant to be identified as homosexuals. In Homos, he studies the historical, political, and philosophical grounds for the current distrust, within the gay community, of self-identifying moves, for the paradoxical desire to be invisibly visible. While acknowledging the dangers of any kind of group identification (if you can be singled out, you can be disciplined), Bersani argues for a bolder presentation of what it means to be gay. In their justifiable suspicion of labels, gay men and lesbians have nearly disappeared into their own sophisticated awareness of how they have been socially constructed. By downplaying their sexuality, gays risk self-immolation--they will melt into the stifling culture they had wanted to contest. In his chapters on contemporary queer theory, on Foucault and psychoanalysis, on the politics of sadomasochism, and on the image of "the gay outlaw" in works by Gide, Proust, and Genet, Bersani raises the exciting possibility that same-sex desire by its very nature can disrupt oppressive social orders. His spectacular theory of "homo-ness" will be of interest to straights as well as gays, for it designates a mode of connecting to the world embodied in, but not reducible to, a sexual preference. The gay identity Bersani advocates is more of a force--as such, rather cool to the modest goal of social tolerance for diverse lifestyles--which can lead to a massive redefining of sociality itself, and of what we might expect from human communities.

Written by lesbians of different ages, races and religions,and compiled by one of the gay movement's best-known writers and activists,these original essays give vibrant voice to the diversity of the lesbian experience. Celebrating the many ways in which the lesbian experience is unique from all others, many of these pieces focus on specific lesbian concerns such as sexual practices, raising children and higher incidence of certain illnesses.Beyond pointing out these differences, the essays also provide a comprehensive view of the many phases of lesbian life by covering diverse topics like body piercing, coming out and work. Short narratives, To Mother or Not to Mother," Confessions of a Lesbian Vampire," About Being an Old Lesbian in Love," and more,complement and enrich the main essays, adding a unique personal tone to the collection. A mix of the serious and the irreverent, Dyke Life is an important contribution to gay and lesbian literature.

The decade of the 1970s is commonly remembered for its kitschy contributions to popular culture -- bean-bag chairs, platform shoes, bell-bottoms, disaster movies, disco, hot tubs, and hot pants. In The House That Jill Built, Becki Ross offers a rare view of this decade -- one that shows community-based activism challenging the prevailing tenets of individualism and conspicuous consumerism. Ross explores the dedicated struggle of a largely white, middle-class group of lesbian feminists to subvert the history of lesbian invisibility and persecution by claiming a collective, empowering, public presence in Toronto during the mid- to late 1970s. Gathering information from archival sources and numerous interviews with lesbians who were active in the feminist, left, and gay-liberation movements in the 1970s, Ross provides a window onto complex developments in community, identity, and visionary politics. She uses the Lesbian Organization of Toronto (LOOT, 1976-80) as a centrepiece, tracing the route that LOOT members took in enacting their desire to politicize the personal, in order to be lesbian in all aspects of their lives. Ross investigates the properties intrinsic to 'lesbian nationalism': fashion, sexuality, relationships, living arrangements, group membership, service provision, cultural production, and political strategy-making. The House That Jill Built convincingly analyses the significant achievements of lesbian feminism in the 1970s as well as the limitations of identity-based organizing. The book is especially useful for those interested in the fields of women's studies, cultural studies, queer theory, and social movements.

"Adventures in Lesbian Philosophy" explores diverse positive understandings of "lesbian philosophy." Tangren Alexander and Joyce Trebilcot critique the dualisms and methods of traditional Euro-American philosophy and offer creative experiments in wisdom-seeking; Bat-Ami Bar On and Lorena Leigh Saxe examine areas of contested sexual behaviors, such as pornography and sadomasochism; Elizabeth Deumer and Jacquelyn Zita take up the issue of constructing the meaning of "lesbian"; and Chris Cuomo, Barbara Houston, Ruthann Robson, Sarah Lucia Hoagland, and Kathleen Martindale and Martha Saunders discuss facets of lesbian community and responsibility. Special features include: Jacquelyn Zita's portrait of Jeffner Allen's creative lesbian philosophy, Mar'a Lugones' study of Gloria Anzald a's "Borderlands/La Frontera", Naomi Scheman's reflections on Jewish lesbian writing, and Ruth Ginzberg's interpretation of Audre Lorde's conception of eros. Editor Claudia Card has also included an up-to-date bibliography of lesbian philosophy and related works.

All original to this volume, these evocative essays by such scholars as Robyn Wiegman, Elizabeth Grosz, and Judith Roof examine a realm as yet untouched in literary and cultural criticism and gender theory, a specifically lesbian postmodern.

The essays trace, on the one hand, how some lesbian cultural theory and production foreground a politics of difference and marginality and thereby critique patriarchal and heterosexual hegemony. On the other hand, some essays note how a postmodern aesthetic, with its valorization of difference, sexual plurality, and gender blurring, assists lesbian cultural production.

Among the topics discussed are the shifting definitions of "lesbian" and "postmodern"; the potential "and" danger of this new conceptual territory in theory, literary and visual representation, and popular culture; the lesbian in Hollywood film; actors Jodie Foster and Sandra Bernhard; and works by Jeanette Winterson, Michelle Cliff, and Gloria Anzaldua.

Throughout, contributors address the interrelated questions and issues of class, race, ethnicity, postcolonialism, and commodification.

..". a work that builds a substantial bridge between Freudian psychoanalysis and radical feminist thought, particularly on the subject of lesbianism.... Presenting a complex argument about an issue vital to the psychoanalytic endeavor as well as to feminist theory, The Practice of Love should stimulate a reconsideration of perversion and the construction of sexual fantasy. The illumination of the fantasies that make lesbian desire distinctive will necessarily open up our understanding of all sexuality." Jessica Benjamin, New York Times Book Review

"Teresa de Lauretis has entwined three books into one: a critical history of psychoanalytic theories of female homosexuality; a bold study of how lesbians keep disappearing from popular culture, especially film; and an original speculation on the dynamics of lesbian desire." Elisabeth Young-Bruehl

"An important and original contribution not only to lesbian and gay studies, but also to psychoanalytic theory and film criticism. De Lauretis brings a unique and valuable perspective to issues of great importance today in all these areas." Leo Bersani

"De Lauretis s influential theory gets top marks from sapphic scholars who know best." Out

In an eccentric reading of Freud through Laplanche and the Lacanian and feminist revisions, Teresa de Lauretis delineates a model of "perverse" desire and a theory of lesbian sexuality. The Practice of Love discusses classic psychoanalytic narratives of female homosexuality, contemporary feminist writings on female sexuality, and the evolution of the original fantasies into cultural myths or public fantasies."

Lesbianism in literature has been dealt with rather indirectly in the past. Editors have led readers to the "artistry" of a work containing lesbianism, emphasizing instead the literary history and historical context of the work rather than the representations of lesbianism. The editor for Colette's "The Pure and the Impure, " for instance, affirms that Colette has a knowledge of a "strange sisterhood," but assures readers she has never strayed from the "normal."

In the groundbreaking "A Lure of Knowledge, " Judith Roof demonstrates that representations of lesbian sexuality occupy specific locations or positions in the arguments, subject matter, and rhetoric of Western European and American literary criticism. She examines the political context of representations: how lesbian sexuality is used as a signifier an why it appears when and where it does.

Roof argues that attempts to depict or explain lesbian sexuality spur anxieties about knowledge and identity. In reaction to and denial of these anxieties, lesbian sexuality is represented in film, literature, theory, and criticism as foreplay, as simulated heterosexuality, as erotic excess, as joking inauthenticity, as artful compromise, or as masculine mask in a specific repertoire of neutralization and evasion. Challenging the heterosexism of film theory and feminist theory, this book analyzes the rhetorical use of lesbian sexuality. Roof explores a range of discourses, from the woks of such authors as Anais Nin, Olga Broumas, Julia Kristeva, Jane Rule, Luce Iriguray, and Sigmund Freud, to films such as "Emmanuelle, Desert Hearts, Entre Nous, " and "I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, " to professional tennis.

Lesbianism in literature has been dealt with rather indirectly in the past. Editors have led readers to the "artistry" of a work containing lesbianism, emphasizing instead the literary history and historical context of the work rather than the representations of lesbianism. The editor for Colette's "The Pure and the Impure, " for instance, affirms that Colette has a knowledge of a "strange sisterhood," but assures readers she has never strayed from the "normal."

In the groundbreaking "A Lure of Knowledge, " Judith Roof demonstrates that representations of lesbian sexuality occupy specific locations or positions in the arguments, subject matter, and rhetoric of Western European and American literary criticism. She examines the political context of representations: how lesbian sexuality is used as a signifier an why it appears when and where it does.

Roof argues that attempts to depict or explain lesbian sexuality spur anxieties about knowledge and identity. In reaction to and denial of these anxieties, lesbian sexuality is represented in film, literature, theory, and criticism as foreplay, as simulated heterosexuality, as erotic excess, as joking inauthenticity, as artful compromise, or as masculine mask in a specific repertoire of neutralization and evasion. Challenging the heterosexism of film theory and feminist theory, this book analyzes the rhetorical use of lesbian sexuality. Roof explores a range of discourses, from the woks of such authors as Anais Nin, Olga Broumas, Julia Kristeva, Jane Rule, Luce Iriguray, and Sigmund Freud, to films such as "Emmanuelle, Desert Hearts, Entre Nous, " and "I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, " to professional tennis.

Lesbian life in America continues to evolve. As Lillian Faderman writes, there are "no constants with regard to lesbianism," except that lesbians prefer women.

In this book, Faderman reclaims the story of lesbian life in twentieth-century America, tracing the evolution of lesbian identity and subcultures from early networks to today's diverse lifestyles. Faderman samples from journals, unpublished manuscripts, songs, media accounts, novels, medical literature, pop culture artifacts, and rich firsthand testimony with lesbians of all races, ages, and classes, uncovering a surprising narrative of unparalleled depth and originality.

No one is brought up to be gay. Lacking the formal support systems --families, schools, churches -- gay men rely on their folklore in interacting withone another and to relieve the pressures of belonging to a stigmatized group. Jokesand other forms of humor, language, and personal experience narratives help gay mento identify and communicate with one another -- even in straight settings.

More Man than You'll Ever Be explores the uses of gay men'sfolklore. Wheter funny or sad, poignant or shocking, each story and joke containsmessages, sometimes surprising ones. Goodwin decodes some of these messages to helpus understand not only the gay subculture but also ourselves.