In "Lesbian Utopics," Annamarie Jagose surveys the construction of the lesbian and finds her in a cultural space that is both everywhere and, of all places, nowhere. The "lesbian," in other words, is symbolically central, yet culturally marginal.
Challenging the often unquestioned hegemony of gay studies over lesbian studies, Jagose provides a truly evocative and compelling theory of the lesbian. In drawing upon the work of such theorists as Eve Kosofky Sedgwick and Luce Irigaray, she suggestively articulates a theory of "lesbian" spacew which symbolically exceeds the boundaries of understanding and comprehension. Jagose argues that the culturally constructed category of the "lesbian"--the symbolic logic of which goes beyond traditional cultural limits and regulations--is also simultaneously and, quite provocatively, also the product of those regimes of power. It is this explosive tension that Jagose emphasizes in her reading of various conceptions of the "lesbian." In examining this construction, Jagose surveys a diverse range of texts (sonnets, essays, and novels) spanning the cultural terrain of Mexico and Australia, the US and France. She concludes with a reading of Cindy Crawford as signifying the emergence of lesbian utopics within pop culture. common: they both represent the category "lesbian" as a utopic space, one which exceeds structures of regulation. "Lesbian Utopics" argues that the ways in which "lesbian" is used assumes the characteristics of a utopic site: one outside, and other than the norm, and has placed on it an excess of cultural legislation.
Reading a broad variety of works by five women (Irigaray, Nicole Brossard, Marilyn Hacker, Mary Fallon andGloria Anzaldua, Annamarie Jagose makes the argument for "lesbian" as not just an exterior and alterior category, but one which is produced by the very cultural laws whose mandate the category seems to defy and transcend. Using Foucault as a means of examining the texts, the author producesa reading which contends that "lesbian" is emphatically "interior" to culture, produced by the mechanisms of proscripted heterosexuality.
"Lesbian Utopics" concludes that the illusion of "outside"-ness promised by the appelation of lesbian is in literal terms a utopic space: ("ou-topos," no place.) This is an important, valuable and controversial addition to lesbian and gay studies, and should interest those in feminist theory and literary criticism.

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.

When Virginia Woolf first met Vita Sackville-West at Clive Bell's home in 1922, she wrote that Vita made her feel 'virgin, shy, & schoolgirlish'. But over the next three years Vita charmed away her shyness, and at the end of 1925 made Virginia her lover. Vita and Virginia examines the creative intimacy between the two women, interpreting both their relationship and their work in the light of their experience as married lesbians. The contradictions and conflicts of their situation are worked out through the construction of different narratives of femininity, in letters, novels, diaries, and other texts. The book discusses the two women's continual renegotiation of what it means to be female, and suggests that the mutual exchange of different versions of womanhood is crucial to the development of their friendship. Vita and Virginia offers innovative readings of both women's fiction, their autobiographical texts, and a long-overdue study of Sackville-West's work as a biographer and novelist. Emphasizing wider contexts, Suzanne Raitt assesses the links between homosexual desire and literary innovation, public politics and private lives. Her work provides an invaluable new perspective on the relations between sexuality and feminism in modernism.

Violence Against Lesbians and Gay Men is the first book to reveal the shocking problem of anti-gay/lesbian violence. Beginning with an overview of the emergence of lesbian and gay neighbourhoods in major U.S. cities after World War II, Comstock describes how the increased visibility of lesbians and gay men was followed by physical attacks that were illegal but socially sanctioned. He presents results of his survey on present-day violence and then studies the perpetrators, using information supplied by survey participants as well as reports from the media, court records, and personal interviews. Finally, Comstock proposes a sociological explanation for the fact that adolescent males are the group most prone to violence against lesbians and gay men.

Crossfire collects Staceyann Chin's empowering, feminist-LGBTQ-Caribbean, activist-driven poetry for the first time in a single book. According to The New York Times, Chin is "sassy, rageful and sometimes softly self-mocking." The Advocate says that her poems, "combine hilarious one-liners with a refusal to conform" and note "Chin is out to confront more than just the straight world."

In this though-provoking study of nineteenth-century America, J. Samaine Lockwood offers an important new interpretation of the literary movement known as American regionalism. Lockwood argues that regionalism in New England was part of a widespread woman-dominated effort to rewrite history. Lockwood demonstrates that New England regionalism was an intellectual endeavor that overlapped with colonial revivalism and included fiction and history writing, antique collecting, colonial home restoration, and photography. The cohort of writers and artists leading this movement included Sarah Orne Jewett, Alice Morse Earle, and C. Alice Baker, and their project was taken up by women of a younger generation, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, who extended regionalism through the modernist moment. Lockwood draws on a diverse archive that includes fiction, material culture, collecting guides, and more. Showing how these women intellectuals aligned themselves with a powerful legacy of social and cultural dissent, Lockwood reveals that New England regionalism performed queer historical work, placing unmarried women and their myriad desires at the center of both regional and national history.

Acts of Gaiety explores the mirthful modes of political performance by LGBT artists, activists, and collectives that have inspired and sustained deadly serious struggles for revolutionary change. The book explores antics such as camp, kitsch, drag, guerrilla theatre, zap actions, rallies, manifestos, pageants, and parades alongside more familiar forms of ""legitimate theatre."" Against queer theory's long-suffering romance with mourning and melancholia and a national agenda that urges homosexuals to renounce pleasure if they want to be taken seriously by mainstream society, Acts of Gaiety seeks to reanimate notions of ""gaiety"" as a political value for LGBT activism. The book mines the archives of lesbian-feminist activism of the 1960s-70s, highlighting the outrageous gaiety that lay at the centre of the social and theatrical performances of the era and uncovering original documents long thought to be lost. Juxtaposing historical figures such as Valerie Solanas and Jill Johnston with more recent performers and activists (including Hothead Paisan, Bitch & Animal, and the Five Lesbian Brothers), Warner shows how reclaiming this largely discarded and disavowed past elucidates possibilities for being and belonging. Acts of Gaiety explores the mutually informing histories of gayness as politics and as joie de vivre, along with the centrality of liveliness to queer performance and protest.

The complete and groundbreaking "The L Word" is now out on DVD and this book makes the perfect companion, covering the series in its entirety. "Loving The L Word" picks up where Reading "The L Word: Outing Contemporary Television" (I.B. Tauris, 2006) left off. With new, updated chapters by many of the same television writers and scholars who contributed to the first volume, as well as essays by some newcomers, "Loving The L Word" explores the series' quantum contribution to the ongoing evolution of queer television. Whether you loved "The L Word", hated it, or loved to hate it, this book recognizes that the show transformed the post-Ellen LGBT television landscape, fulfilling a long-neglected, visceral desire for lesbian stories and images. In the process, it reshaped the communities that follow and talk about queer television and care about the narratives and characters that drive it. Including complete Character/Actor, Film/TV and Episode guides, the book also proceeds from the understanding that while "The L Word' ended in 2009 it manages to live on - in the lives of its fans, as well as in a new reality spin-off, "The Real L Word".

"Backward Glances" reveals that the passionate love one woman feels for another occupies a position of unsuspected centrality in contemporary Chinese mass cultures. By examining representations of erotic and romantic love between women in popular films, elite and pulp fiction, and television dramas, Fran Martin shows how youthful same-sex love is often framed as a universal, even ennobling, feminine experience. She argues that a temporal logic dominates depictions of female homoeroticism, and she traces that logic across texts produced and consumed in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan during the twentieth century and the early twenty-first. Attentive to both transnational cultural flows and local particularities, Martin shows how loving relations between women in mass culture are usually represented as past experiences. Adult protagonists revel in the repeated, mournful narration of their memories. Yet these portrayals do not simply or finally consign the same-sex loving woman to the past--they also cause her to reappear ceaselessly in the present.

As Martin explains, memorial schoolgirl love stories are popular throughout contemporary Chinese cultures. The same-sex attracted young woman appears in both openly homophobic and proudly queer-affirmative narratives, as well as in stories whose ideological valence is less immediately clear. Martin demonstrates that the stories, television programs, and films she analyzes are not idiosyncratic depictions of marginal figures, but manifestations of a broader, mainstream cultural preoccupation. Her investigation of representations of same-sex love between women sheds new light on contemporary Chinese understandings of sex, love, gender, marriage, and the cultural ordering of human life.

A Stonewall Honor Book of the American Library Association's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Round Table "Rare and Commonplace Flowers performs an invaluable service: unforgettably memorializing the remarkable Lota de Macedo Soares, and in the process filling in a crucial gap in Bishop's biography. This book honors a deeply moving love between two brilliant women: each highly public, a celebrity in her own nation; each deeply private, and happy (for a time) in the fragile heaven of their home."-The New York Times Book Review "As a portrait of Lota and Bishop in Brazil, Rare and Commonplace Flowers is a rare and illuminating book."-Women's Review of Books "Novelist Oliveira's engaging dual biography tells of Bishop and Soares's] 'long and sad' relationship. . . . This book offers a new perspective on the American poet, and the love story between these two women is undeniably intense and tragic. Recommended."-Library Journal Rare and Commonplace Flowers tells the story of two fascinating and controversial women. Elizabeth Bishop, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet, sought artistic inspiration in Brazil. There she fell in love with Lota de Macedo Soares, a self-trained Brazilian architect. This dual biography-brilliantly researched, and written in a lively, novelistic style-follows their relationship from 1951 to 1967, the time when the two lived together in Brazil. A tale of two artists and two cultures, Rare and Commonplace Flowers offers unique perspectives on both women and their work. Carmen L. Oliveira provides an unparalleled level of detail and insight, due to both her familiarity with Brazil and her access to the country's artistic elite, many of whom had a direct connection with Bishop and Soares. Rare pictures of the two artists and their home bring this unique story to life. Carmen L. Oliveira is a Brazilian novelist. Neil K. Besner is a professor in the English department at the University of Winnipeg in Canada.

Examine the impact of disclosure on sons whose fathers are gay! In this book, Andrew Gottlieb, author of Out of the Twilight: Fathers of Gay Men Speak, explores yet another side of the impact of homosexuality on families. He now looks at how sons react to learning that their fathers are gay, allowing us to see, over time, how this has changed their family relationships and their own lives. Simply and elegantly written, this psychoanalytically oriented qualitative research study is accessible to both the beginner and the more advanced researcher and practitioner. It draws from a wide range of literary, popular, and psychological sources and includes an interview guide, a reference section, and an index. When someone discloses as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, it is not just an individual event. It is a family event. Based on estimates of married gay, lesbian, and bisexual persons, a spouse's coming out affects up to 2,000,000 couples. Yet, its impact has been largely ignored. Children's voices are the least often heard. . . . Little has been written about sons of fathers who came out during or after marriage. Data for studies that do exist most often draw from the fathers' point of view. . . . The significance of this study lies in its comprehensive, detailed picture of sons and gay fathers as they develop their separate self-images as well as the images of their son-father relationships over time. Painful, sensitive, often triumphant, the stories and [the author's] analysis of their thoughts, perceptions, and feelings afford a multidimensional, longitudinal viewing. Step by step, we follow the complicated dance of these sons and fathers as they develop and define their connection. from the Foreword by Amity Pierce Buxton, Author of The Other Side of the Closet: The Coming-Out Crisis for Straight Spouses and Families Sons Talk About Their Gay Fathers: Life Curves is a storybookan extended narrative moved along, but not overshadowed, by psychoanalytic theory. The Introduction briefly reviews more recent writings of the fathering experience as told by gay men themselves, setting the stage for: Father to Childa look at the father as seen through the ever-shifting eyes of his son at different phases of the life cycle The Quest for the Real Fatheran examination of sons' responses to their fathers' homosexuality as captured in film, fiction, nonfiction, television, and the psychological literature Methodologythe story of the research process, including sampling, the search for subjects, trustworthiness, the interview, bias, and data collection The Storiesan anthology of narratives the author constructed from the interview material, painting an intimate portrait of each individual son Findingsa categorical analysis Discussiona summary of all the preceding material cast in a developmental framework, highlighting implications for future research and clinical practice

Taking into account recent historic changes, this second edition updates the essays on the Supreme Court, same-sex marriage, the Right, and trans history. Authors of several other essays have taken the opportunity to add new material and references where warranted.

Find the facts, figures, and connections you need on the Internet This powerful reference tool is the most comprehensive, reliable guide to Internet resources for the LBGTQ community. More than just a guide to useful Web sites, it also evaluates LGBTQ mailing lists, message boards, search engines, and portals. The Harvey Milk Institute Guide to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Internet Research provides background information as well as useful URLs. It covers the history and objectives of major sites. The in-depth interviews with leaders of the queer Internet include discussions with Barry Harrison, Director of Queer Arts Resources, and Sister Mary Elizabeth, founder of AEGiS. The Harvey Milk Institute Guide to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Internet Research includes resources for a variety of academic disciplines, including: the humanities the social sciences law labor studies media studies transgender and intersex studies and more Edited by Alan L. Ellis, co-chair of the institute's board of directors, The Harvey Milk Institute Guide to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Internet Research is an indispensable tool for researchers, community leaders, and scholars.

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."

How do you "hook" a Millennial student into caring about women's issues when feminism has been declared dead for decades? Written in an engaging style that promotes critical thinking, Women's Issues for a New Generation is intended for freshman- and sophomore-level undergraduates who have never heard of Mary Wollstonecraft or Anita Hill. The interdisciplinary text includes three major sections: women in the U.S., women from diverse groups (e.g., Native American and disabled), and women in the global arena. It also stresses the inclusion of men in topics such as body image, since "women's issues" are really issues that affect everyone. Other striking features included the contemporary debates (e.g., War on Women and Hillary Clinton's ambitions) and the current issues such as human trafficking. Textbooks on gender and women's studies often emphasize theory with the assumption that students already know about women's history, the pay gap, and other basic information; Women's Issues for a New Generation serves as a reader-friendly bridge to more advanced analysis of women and gender. Written by a social worker, this textbook applies social work values and the strength perspective to anyone who is fighting gender inequality.

This study challenges the long-held belief that the early Middle Ages tolerated and even fostered same-sex relations and that intolerance of homosexuality developed only late in the medieval period. Th e text argues that early medieval Christians did not tolerate same-sex acts and, furthermore, that men and women during this time who preferred homosexual relations pursued their desires in spite of official sanctions. This was an age before people recognized the existence - or the possibility - of the "closet". This work focuses on Anglo-Saxon literature but also includes examinations of contemporary opera, dance and theatre. The text employs the figure of the shadow to illustrate the coexistence of homosexual and heterosexual relations in the Middle Ages. The figure is introduced through an analysis of a man's part sung by a woman in operas such as Gounod's "Faust". The reverse figure - men taking women's parts - is traced in two dances by Mark Morris, "The Hard Nut" and "Dido and Aeneas". Also analyzed is the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant in Tony Kushner's play, "Angels in America" and the poems, "Beowulf" and "The Wanderer".

Barbara Hammer (b. 1939) is an American feminist artist known as a pioneer of queer experimental and documentary film. In October 2017, Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay & Lesbian Art will present a comprehensive solo exhibition to celebrate the depth and expa nse of Hammer's five decades of art making. Bringing together both known and previously unseen works of film and video, installations, works on paper, and material from her archive, the exhibition addresses critical themes that appear in Hammer's work, inc luding: lesbian representation, subjectivity, and sexuality; intimacy and sensation; and conditions and maintenance of life and illness. This exhibition highlights the resonating impact of Hammer's artistic narrative and material experimentation across dis ciplines within queer art history. Additionally, as part of this exhibition, we are putting together a publication that will touch on different aspects of Hammer's body of wor k and practice. The material included will look at her work in relationship to experimental queer cinema; lesbian sexuality and lesbian feminist history; hapticity and wildness; viruses, medicine, and environment; to name a few. We desire for the book to f eature a wide range of responses, from academic analysis to poetic interpretation, sprinkled with personal and artistic anecdotes. More of a hybrid monograph and catalogue raisonne, we are very excited that this book will be the first of its kind that cele brates five decades of Hammer's work.

Sapphists and Sexologists: Histories of Sexualities Volume II, contributes to the ever evolving debates on lesbian lives and histories. This volume includes a mixture of engaging essays from established and young scholars and opens with a succinct, incisive and often comical take on lesbian lives, relationships and cats, by internationally esteemed scholar Sally R. Munt. Unique essays include the personal reflections on writing historical fiction by the celebrated author Emma Donoghue and an exclusive conversational record from Joan Nestle on her life, loves and activism. The scope of this collection is truly international; a collaborative work of scholars from many different disciplines, universities and countries. The central theme of the book continues from the first volume Tribades, Tommies and Transgressives: Histories of Sexualities, in its questioning of established histories of sexualities, methodologies and theoretical practices.

This volume brings together approaches to, and perspectives on, English, Spanish, and Galician language, literature, and culture from the fields of women's, gender, and queer studies. As its title reflects, the book adopts an inclusive attitude to the so-called "others" present in these fields. Since queer theory first appeared in academia, its influence has been notorious within both women's and genders. As such, it is vital to "queer" academia so that it re-conceptualises its foundations; indeed, the contributions here serve to alter the reader's consciousness of the terms "woman" and "gender".The first chapters concern the field of discourse analysis. Two discuss the written work of female scientists in the Late Modern Era and their role in society. Another deals with women's political discourse in South America. In the following section on literature, the contributors question the current heteronormative and androcentric ways of reading texts. The works on culture study contemporary genres, such as video games, video clips, and pieces of news, and take readers away from Europe. The Epilogue draws on the book's intersubjective spirit to propose a dialogue, among multiple disciplines and the people who practise them. As such, the volume reflects the eclectic nature of queer, women's, and gender studies, and their world-wide acceptance by the scholarly community.

This unique collection examines the experience of lesbians in Israel, providing insight into some of the institutions that have helped shape that experience. The book analyzes and interprets how culturally specific political, ideological, and social systems construct lesbian identities, experiences, and dilemmas, and it also explores "how a specific society is seen, understood, and interpreted from a lesbian prespective, written by scholars, professionals, and grassroots broad perspective of the lesbian experience in Israel.