LGBTQIA+ Studies / topics Books

Book SynopsisCelebrates diverse queer experiences on society's marginsOutskirts addresses the diverse and intricate aspects of the queer experience on the periphery of the social world. From the Korean spa to the Carnival krewe to new sexual identities, this volume asks important questions about the atypical places, spaces, and identities that are an important part of LGBTQ life in the United States. By bringing together scholars specializing in the less visible facets of queer culture, the book offers valuable insights that contribute to a deeper understanding of queer perspectives and their impact on the discipline of sociology. The volume challenges researchers to focus on diversity and complexity of the queer experience in the fringe to inform larger sociological questions and contribute to the field of sociology. Most simply put: what is it that we learn from studying at the margins?The essays in Outskirts focus on the influence of place, both physical and virtual, within institutional setting

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Book SynopsisAn innovative, data-driven explanation of how public opinion shifted on LGBTQ rights The Path to Gay Rights is the first social science analysis of how and why the LGBTQ movement achieved its most unexpected victorytransforming gay people from a despised group of social deviants into a minority worthy of rights and protections in the eyes of most Americans. The book weaves together a narrative of LGBTQ history with new findings from the field of political psychology to provide an understanding of how social movements affect mass attitudes in the United States and globally. Using data going back to the 1970s, the book argues that the current understanding of how social movements change mass opinionthrough sympathetic media coverage and endorsements from political leaderscannot provide an adequate explanation for the phenomenal success of the LGBTQ movement at changing the public's views. In The Path to Gay Rights, Jeremiah Garretson argues that the LGBTQ community's response to the AIDSTrade ReviewThe book's narrative is hopefulit's a story of how countless personal interactions and individual changes of heart, not elite opinion or legal mandates, drove one of the most remarkable attitudinal shifts in modern history. * Reason *This fine study examines how the change in public opinion took place over the years while looking at the ultimate causes of social change generally...An important addition to the LGBTQ bookshelf. * Booklist *Quantitative data backs up the arguments of this serious social science book. It makes a significant contribution to the political science literature on LGBT studies by synthesizing and advancing the empirical arguments on the shift in opinion on gay rights in just a few generations. -- ChoiceGarretson seeks to complicate the mainstream narrative about what has caused the sea change toward the acceptance of the LGBTQ people in the United States...Will be of interest to political scientists and community organizers alike. * Library Journal *The Path to Gay Rights examines why and how public support for gays and lesbians increased markedly in recent decades. Jeremiah J. Garretson explores the origins of this unusually rapid shift in public opinion, tracing it back to Americans increased contact with gay and lesbian individuals both directly and virtually through TV characters.The book provides a rich and layered account of events, activism, interest group activity, and political campaigns amplified by careful analysis of survey data, online searches, and Congressional votes. It provides invaluable insight into the dynamics of public opinion concerning gays and lesbians and social change more generally. -- Leonie Huddy,Co-Editor of The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, Second EditionThis book is certain to be among the most important published this year. Support for gay rights has followed a different trajectory than support for any other minority groups rights, building more slowly but accelerating more steeply.In The Path to Gay Rights, Garretson has compellingly told the story that explains whya remarkable piece of scholarship. -- Marc J. Hetherington,Author of Why Washington Won’t Work: Polarization, Political Trust, and the Governing CrisisGarretson provides a compelling, multi-method account of the role of the gay rights movement, politics, and interpersonal contact in creating this massive shift in public opinion. * Social Forces *

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Book SynopsisReimagines the field of queer studies by asking How do we do queer theory? Imagining Queer Methods showcases the methodological renaissance unfolding in queer scholarship. This volume brings together emerging and esteemed researchers from all corners of the academy who are defining new directions for the field. From critical race studies, history, journalism, lesbian feminist studies, literature, media studies, and performance studies to anthropology, education, psychology, sociology, and urban planning, this impressive interdisciplinary collection covers topics such as humanistic approaches to reading, theorizing, and interpreting, as well as scientific appeals to measurement, modeling, sampling, and statistics. By bringing together these diverse voices into an unprecedented single volume, Amin Ghaziani and Matt Brim inspire us with innovative ways of thinking about methods and methodologies in queer studies.Trade Review"For those working in the areas of queer theory or queer studies, we know that the question of something called ‘queer methods’ or ‘queer methodologies’ is a long-standing and vexing one. It is a mixing of two ideas that on first blush appear incompatible—that is, ‘queerness’ and ‘method.’ The latter calls to mind the possibility of unified disciples, fixed approaches, and data sets, while the former defies any such easy categorical coherence. Imagining Queer Methods is nothing less than a manifesto on the future of how these two seemingly orthogonal terms can together be productively engaged in knowledge production. Amin Ghaziani and Matt Brim, two leading voices among their generation of queer theorists, have carefully curated an impressive array of transdisciplinary voices who do precisely that in the essays contained in this volume." -- Dwight A. McBride, author of Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch: Essays On Race and Sexuality"Imagining Queer Methods jumpstarts a much-needed conversation among sociologists, historians, and literary theorists about what exactly it means to ‘do’ queer work. Original and path-breaking, Imagining Queer Methods will change the way we think about and practice our scholarship." -- Arlene Stein, author of Unbound: Transgender Men and the Transformation of Identity"The scholars and activists of Imagining Queer Methods dare to ask not only ‘why’ but ‘how.’ Through oral history, community study, social mapping, and manifesto they break through the artificial divide between academic and activist methods in order to name and support the political and procedural protocols that might—with struggle and care—give birth to dynamic practices of queer liberation." -- Robert F. Reid-Pharr, author of Archives of Flesh: Spain, African America, and Post-Humanist Critique"Smart, scrappy, and exciting, Imagining Queer Methods brings together top scholars from across disciplines for a provocative tour of how queerness can challenge and invigorate research enterprises" -- Joshua Gamson, author of Modern Families: Stories of Extraordinary Journeys to Kinship"Is 'queer methods' an oxymoron? Not according to this volume, which takes aim at the longstanding assumption that the political force of queer studies arises from its anti-disciplinary commitments. Provocative, timely, and fierce, Imagining Queer Methods is both a case study and manifesto for why methods matter." -- Robyn Wiegman,author of Object Lessons"This volume is highly recommended for graduate students and scholars who seek to understand queer methods and apply them in their own work." * CHOICE *

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Book SynopsisHow do we represent the experience of being a gender and sexual outlaw? In Queer Forms, Ramzi Fawaz explores how the central values of 1970s movements for women's and gay liberationincluding consciousness-raising, separatism, and coming out of the closetwere translated into a range of American popular culture forms. Throughout this period, feminist and gay activists fought social and political battles to expand, transform, or wholly explode definitions of so-called normal gender and sexuality. In doing so, they inspired artists, writers, and filmmakers to invent new ways of formally representing, or giving shape to, non-normative genders and sexualities. This included placing women, queers, and gender outlaws of all stripes into exhilarating new environmentsfrom the streets of an increasingly gay San Francisco to a post-apocalyptic commune, from an Upper East Side New York City apartment to an all-female version of Earthand finding new ways to formally render queTrade Review"This is the book I have been waiting for: fearless, brilliant, and filled with love for feminist and queer cultural forms. Rather than fetishizing formlessness as the pinnacle of freedom, Ramzi Fawaz assembles and mines a rich and moving archive of feminist and queer cultural forms that have given us tools to practice intimacy, radical vulnerability, friendship, and worldmaking. Queer Forms was written out of a deep affection for the visionary work of feminist and queer cultural producers, offering us a blueprint for allowing feminist and queer worlds to take shape." * Jennifer C. Nash, author of Birthing Black Mothers *"An invigorating work of queer feminist political theory and imagination. Defying the received demand that instances of nonnormative gender identity remain fluid and formless, Ramzi Fawaz dares to present subversive examples of gender and sexual outlaws whose actions track an unfinished project of freedom. In a range of brilliant readings across political movements and cultural texts, he advances new figures of the thinkable and democratic worldmaking that inspire free action in the present." * Linda Zerilli, University of Chicago *"Parting ways with queer theory’s preference for the ephemeral, Queer Forms feels the touch and re-touch of shapeshifting forms as it sets queer studies in new and dynamic relation to its objects in the world. In one of his signal claims, Fawaz uses the materiality of form to rethink the pervasive and privileged association of queerness with formlessness and fluidity. Thus, he argues that feminist and queer ideas become meaningful as they take material shape within the realm of popular cultural production, where they change audiences in ways that neither a pedantic politics nor a moralizing theory can." * Matt Brim, author of Poor Queer Studies: Confronting Elitism in the University *"An inspirational history of queer and feminist cultural politics forged in the 1970s and extending to the 1990s. Ramzi Fawaz brilliantly maps the forms of relationality that feminist, lesbian, and gay communities invented to visualize themselves and their futures. In an argument that is both crystalline and capacious, he has discerned patterns across a wide range of popular cultural texts, objects, and images, and he demonstrates how radical change has been—and can be—imagined and enacted. Queer Forms is generously both history and manifesto. It calls on us to ask with each other how we want to see our future take shape." * David J. Getsy, author of Abstract Bodies: Sixties Sculpture in the Expanded Field of Gender *"With Queer Forms, Ramzi Fawaz has examined gender and sexual formlessness illustrated by queer and feminist film, literature and visual culture. This 'shapeshifting' allows for greater evolution, authenticity and intimacy for all." -- Karla Strand * Ms. Magazine *"Including detailed footnotes, a thorough bibliography, and illustrative images, this volume will interest and engage those working in the field of women's and gender studies." -- R. Stone (Mt. St. Joseph University) * CHOICE *

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewQueering the Countryside operationalizes the & rural as a queer analytic that serves as a productive framework to rethink the relationship between sexuality, space, and place. It is a welcomed addition to the queer studies canon. -- E. Patrick Johnson,author of Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South—An Oral HistoryRather than simply populating rural landscapes with queer folk who, in multiple senses, have been there all along, Queering the Countryside opens with a much more ambitious question: What would the study of life in the countryside look like if it pushed past its historic dependence on the fantasy-ridden spatial dichotomy between rural and urban? Imaginative, capacious, and complex. -- Kath Weston,author of Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, KinshipTogether these essays gift scholars with a new chapter in the rural turn that further cracks the foundations of metronormativity. Welcome to the backwoods of North America and the forefront of queer studies. -- Scott Herring,author of Another Country: Queer Anti-UrbanismThis collection of essays is, in many ways, an important contribution to the study of LGBT individual living in rural areas. * Choice Connect *These interdisciplinary essays, taken together, are generally successful in rejecting stereotypes of non-urban queer life as one of isolation and alienation. * Journal of American History *This new book is the first detailed and comprehensive study of queer desire in rural American and it does so from a multi-disciplinary perspective.What we read here challenges us to look at our experiences in ways that have a great deal more to form identity. * Reviews by Amos Lassen *An eclectic volume that serves the crucial function of relocating queer studies scholarship from city to country. * The Journal of Southern History *

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Book SynopsisA definitive collection of original essays on queer politics From Harvey Milk to ACT UP to Proposition 8, no political change in the last two decades has been as rapid as the advancement of civil rights for LGBTQ people. As we face a critical juncture in progressive activism, political science, which has been slower than most disciplines to study the complexity of queer politics, must grapple with the shifting landscape of LGBTQ rights and inclusion. LGBTQ Politics analyzes both the successes and obstacles to building the LGBTQ movement over the past twenty years, offering analyses that point to possibilities for the movement's future. Essays cover a range of topics, including activism, law, and coalition-building, and draw on subfields such as American politics, comparative politics, political theory, and international relations. LGBTQ Politics presents the full range of methodological, ideological, and substantive approaches to LGBTQ politics that exist inTrade Review"LGBTQ Politics happily upends whatever it is we thought we meant by LGBTQ politics. In addition to the volume's superb makeovers of the now-usual suspects-marriage equality and public opinion on LGBTQ lives and rights-this reader makes a winning argument that so many not gay vectors of inequality and politicization are of critical import to queer communities and a queerer future...comprehensive and commanding." -Joseph J. Fischel,Author of Sex and Harm in the Age of Consent "For far too long, LGBTQ and sexuality politics have been sidelined, considered less important, less respectable, or less necessary research topics in political science. This expansive, impressive, and needed volume provides a forceful and dynamic response. By bringing together some of today's leading lights and newest scholars, this anthology illuminates just how central these questions are to our discipline, how they provide rich opportunities to hone our methodological concerns and substantive analysis, how they provide a means to integrate the many subfields of political science, how they can foster links between our discipline and the broader social sciences, and how political inquiry must connect to the ongoing challenges of contemporary intersectional activism, law, and policymaking." -Stephen Engel,Author of Fragmented Citizens: The Changing Landscape of Gay and Lesbian Lives "This volume is both definitive and comprehensive in its treatment of LGBTQ politics. Collectively, the essays encompass a mature and vital area of scholarly inquiry that spans the range of methods, questions, geographic territory, and historical scope of analysis across political science. They illustrate both the independent importance of LGBTQ politics and the ways that understanding LGBTQ politics challenges and strengthens the discipline of political science. A sterling achievement." -Julie Novkov,Author of The Supreme Court and the Presidency: Struggles for Supremacy "For decades, queer scholars assailed an exclusionary US political science. Now, following the groundbreaking intersectional work of feminist political analysis, these three remarkable scholars have crafted a critical reader to mark the arrival of LGBTQ politics at the center of the American discipline's concerns.Reaching across the LGBTQ political landscape and US structural inequalities, the editors and contributors engage with core concepts for American scholars, students, and activists, then extend the collection's analysis into the world." -Michael Bosia,Co-editor of Global Homophobia: States, Movements, and the Politics of Oppression

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Book SynopsisHonorable Mention, 2021 Latinx Studies Section Outstanding Book Award, given by the Latin American Studies Association Winner, 2020 Latino Book Awards in the LGBTQ+ Themed Section Finalist, 2019 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Studies Critically reimagines Chicanx art, unmasking its queer afterlife Emboldened by the boom in art, fashion, music, and retail culture in 1980s Los Angeles, the iconoclasts of queer Aztlánas Robb Hernández terms the group of artists who emerged from East LA, Orange County, and other parts of Southern California during this perioddeveloped a new vernacular with which to read the city in bloom. Tracing this important but understudied body of work, Archiving an Epidemic catalogs a queer retelling of the Chicana and Chicano art movement, from its origins in the 1960s, to the AIDS crisis and the destruction it wrought in the 1980s, and onto the remnants and legacies of these artists in the current moment. Hernández offers a vocabulary for this multi-modal avant-gardeone that contests the heteromasculinity and ocular surveillance visited upon it by the larger Chicanx community, as well as the formally straight conditions of traditional archive-building, museum institutions, and the art world writ large. With a focus on works by Mundo Meza (195585), Teddy Sandoval (19491995), and Joey Terrill (1955 ), and with appearances by Laura Aguilar, David Hockney, Robert Mapplethorpe, and even Eddie Murphy, Archiving an Epidemic composes a complex picture of queer Chicanx avant-gardisms. With over sixty imagesmany of which are published here for the first timeHernández's work excavates this archive to question not what Chicanx art is, but what it could have been.Trade ReviewA much-needed publication on queer Chicanx art and artists in Southern California during the 1970s and 1980s, as well as a study of loss, memory, and memorialization in the wake of the AIDS crisis...Hernandez’s work to reassemble the “wreckage” of AIDS art and performance allows us to imagine archival methods beyond institutions in performative and creative ways that look to infinite and speculative recastings of history for those the archive left behind. * Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture *Hernández has created a methodology that is built from an understanding that archives are always flawed endeavors, especially given that so much art and performance created in response to AIDS has been lost or destroyed. Instead, he utilizes an approach that embraces degradation and incompletion. By meticulously attending to absences and failures in the work he studies, Hernández’s book offers an innovative new methodology for archival practice ... Hernández’s examination of queer Chicanx avantgarde practices is urgent and long overdue. * The Drama Review *Provides a detailed, sensitive, and textured account of the precarious histories of queer Chicanx artists during the first decades of the ongoing AIDS crisis. This remarkable book offers new ways of thinking about how to reconstruct such histories by attending to the emotional and spatial qualities of the archives, homes, detritus, mementos, and memories that Hernández explores with the reader. While Archiving an Epidemic is a groundbreaking historical recovery of queer art in Los Angeles in the 1980s and 1990s, it is also a reflection on loss, absence, silence, and the threat of erasure. Not only will this book be an essential text in the literatures on queer art, Chicanx art, and the AIDS pandemic, it should be read by anyone confronting archives and their limits. Indeed, no one studying American art and culture of the late twentieth century can afford not to read this book. -- David J. Getsy, School of the Art Institute of ChicagoHernández queers the archive while also stepping outside its institutional limits and into the realm of the absences and shards of human loss from AIDS. In doing so, Hernández develops an alternative methodology for 'queer detrital analysis' that brings the body and space to bear. A tour de force in its archival and critical breadth, this book vividly reimagines the American avant-garde since the 1960s through queer Chicanx artists, groups, and spaces in Southern California. -- Chon Noriega, University of California, Los Angeles

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Book SynopsisWinner, LGBT Studies Lammy Award presented by Lambda LiteraryNeither queer theory nor queer activism has fully reckoned with the role of race in the emergence of the modern gay subject. In A Taste for Brown Bodies, Hiram Pérez traces the development of gay modernity and its continued romanticization of the brown body. Focusing in particular on three figures with elusive queer historiesthe sailor, the soldier, and the cowboy Pérez unpacks how each has been memorialized and desired for their heroic masculinity while at the same time functioning as agents for the expansion of the US borders and neocolonial zones of influence. Describing an enduring homonationalism dating to the birth of the homosexual in the late 19th century, Pérez considers not only how US imperialist expansion was realized, but also how it was visualized for and through gay men. By means of an analysis of literature, film, and photographs from the 19th to the 21st centuriesincluding Herman Melville's BilTrade ReviewPerezs highly sophisticated study gives nuance not only to queer studies but also to critical race theory and American studies. Surely,A Taste for Brown Bodieswill transform our reading methods to redefine future scholarship in our field. * Men and Masculinities *Perez offers a provocative study that identifies connections between modern gay identity, sexual desire, US imperialism, and national identity. * Choice *Tracing the homoerotic archetypes of sailor, cowboy, and soldier, he offers close readings ofBilly BuddandBrokeback Mountainand uses James BaldwinsGoing to Meet the Manto parse images from Abu Ghraib, prodding readers toward a deeper, sometimes uncomfortable understanding of cultural context, colonialism, and complicity. * Chronogram Magazine *Pérez argues that despite queer studies’ avowed dedication to liberation politics, it remains “susceptible to ...a racial unconscious shaped by nation, empire, and the dispositions of global capitalism”… Pérez’s important book offers an unexpected perspective on queer studies, critiquing it for its unexamined imperialist investments rather than simply celebrating it based on an intuitive assumption about queer theory’s radical potential. Readers should not, however, take Pérez’s critique as an attack on queer theory. Baldwin once said that it was out of his love for America that he insisted on the right to critique; Pérez’s book seems to be written in a similar spirit of critique and love. He writes in the service of “contemporary antiracist queer politics,” and as he argues, without a thorough examination of queer theory’s racial unconscious, the field “remains imperiled” (17). -- American LiteratureA compelling contribution to the pivotal turn in queer studies toward a critique of still-emergent forms of homo-normativities. With dazzling close readings of diverse texts, such as James Baldwins 'Going to Meet the Man,' alongside an equally bracing collection of visual texts, Hiram Pérezs book is an impressive critical and analytical performance. Absorbingly written, it never loses sight of the urgency of its core claims and the work that a critically committed queer studies must continue to do. -- Ricardo L. Ortiz,author of Cultural Erotics in Cuban AmericaA Taste for Brown Bodiesis a crucial and groundbreaking study that throws new light on the interplay of cosmopolitanism and homosexuality. Its stunning historical depth and engagement with the promises and limitations of queer theory make it essential reading for scholars of critical ethnic and queer studies. With gorgeous prose and unflinching arguments, this book is sure to incite intense debate, ruffle the right feathers, and move us beyond the impasse that equates race politics with knee-jerk identity politics. -- Richard T. Rodriguez,author of Next of Kin: The Family in Chicano/a Cultural PoliticsTable of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. The Queer Afterlife of Billy Budd 25 2. "Going to Meet the Man" in Abu Ghraib 49 3. The Global Taste for Queer 77 4. You Can Have My Brown Body and Eat It, Too! 97 5. Gay Cowboys Close to Home 125 Notes 153 Bibliography 163 Index 169 About the Author 1

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Zippy and well illustrated, this book persuasively argues that 'equating hypersexualization with sex positivity is a form of Orwellian doublespeak.'" * New York Times Book Review *"Barton, a professor of sociology and gender studies at Morehead State University, assembles her case against porn and pornification through a blend of pop-culture analysis and interviews (mostly with young women in their 20s)...The Pornification of America is a solid update of the traditional feminist case against porn." * The Washington Post *"Once dismissed as a teenage phase, raunch culture is now a path to the presidency. Barton inspires us to take America back. Deftly teasing apart notions of sex positivity, sexual liberation, and radical feminism, she exposes raunch culture's pernicious lie: that pornification is empowerment. And not a moment too soon." -- Lisa Wade, author of American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus"Feel anger, rage, or hope. It is impossible to read The Pornification of America without feeling something about the thorny issues of mediated sexual desire in the 21st century. Bernadette Barton writes about the relentless capitalist commodification of female sexiness and the people who participate in it. From incels to pastors to politicians, nobody is exempt from the objectified and self-objectified raunch culture that Barton portrays. This book aims to deprogram readers’ subconscious conditioning and create the mental space to imagine a sex-positive revolution, not merely sexist shadows of that goal." -- Shira Tarrant, author of The Pornography Industry: What Everyone Needs to Know"In The Pornification of America, Bernadette Barton offers a multi-faceted examination of what she calls 'raunch culture' in American society. She has a sophisticated awareness of feminist debates that are attuned to both protecting women's right to bodily self-determination—and our right to do what we please with our bodies—while simultaneously remaining critical of sexist and racialized cultural commodifications that can have insidious effects on women's sense of feminist freedoms." -- Lynn Chancer, author of After the Rise and Stall of American Feminism: Taking Back a Revolution"In her timely book, Bernadette Barton shows us how raunch culture has invaded every aspect of our lives—personally, professionally and politically. This book should be used on college campuses across the country to stimulate debate on how we got here, why it matters and what we can do to change it." -- Kathleen A. Bogle, author of Hooking Up: Sex, Dating and Relationships on Campus"The Pornification of America is an excellent book for considering how sexism shapes popular culture and consequently public vernacular and social relationships. This is a great read for students or for any reader curious about the politics of raunch culture." -- Kristen Barber, author of Styling Masculinity: Gender, Class, and Inequality in the Men's Grooming Industry"Barton argues that something counterintuitive and grave is happening: as our culture becomes increasingly sexualized, it is actually becoming less sex-positive ... Barton is insightful too about the shortcomings of a culture that upholds consent as the best (and too often only) way for girls and everyone else to articulate their feelings about sex, sexual desire, and sexual attention." * Boston Review *"A valuable contribution to works about sex, the pornication of culture, feminism and the objectication of women. Undoubtedly, the book has a place in every Gender and Women’s Studies class taught in college, but discussions brought up in the book should start earlier than that, with High School students and between parents/caregivers and children." * Metapsychology *

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Book SynopsisAn innovative, data-driven explanation of how public opinion shifted on LGBTQ rights The Path to Gay Rights is the first social science analysis of how and why the LGBTQ movement achieved its most unexpected victorytransforming gay people from a despised group of social deviants into a minority worthy of rights and protections in the eyes of most Americans. The book weaves together a narrative of LGBTQ history with new findings from the field of political psychology to provide an understanding of how social movements affect mass attitudes in the United States and globally. Using data going back to the 1970s, the book argues that the current understanding of how social movements change mass opinionthrough sympathetic media coverage and endorsements from political leaderscannot provide an adequate explanation for the phenomenal success of the LGBTQ movement at changing the public's views. In The Path to Gay Rights, Jeremiah Garretson argues that the LGBTQ community's response to the AIDSTrade Review"The book's narrative is hopefulit's a story of how countless personal interactions and individual changes of heart, not elite opinion or legal mandates, drove one of the most remarkable attitudinal shifts in modern history." * Reason *"This fine study examines how the change in public opinion took place over the years while looking at the ultimate causes of social change generally...An important addition to the LGBTQ bookshelf." * Booklist *"Quantitative data backs up the arguments of this serious social science book. It makes a significant contribution to the political science literature on LGBT studies by synthesizing and advancing the empirical arguments on the shift in opinion on gay rights in just a few generations." -- Choice"Garretson seeks to complicate the mainstream narrative about what has caused the sea change toward the acceptance of the LGBTQ people in the United States...Will be of interest to political scientists and community organizers alike." * Library Journal *"The Path to Gay Rights examines why and how public support for gays and lesbians increased markedly in recent decades. Jeremiah J. Garretson explores the origins of this unusually rapid shift in public opinion, tracing it back to Americans increased contact with gay and lesbian individuals both directly and virtually through TV characters.The book provides a rich and layered account of events, activism, interest group activity, and political campaigns amplified by careful analysis of survey data, online searches, and Congressional votes. It provides invaluable insight into the dynamics of public opinion concerning gays and lesbians and social change more generally." -- Leonie Huddy,Co-Editor of The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, Second Edition"This book is certain to be among the most important published this year. Support for gay rights has followed a different trajectory than support for any other minority groups rights, building more slowly but accelerating more steeply.In The Path to Gay Rights, Garretson has compellingly told the story that explains whya remarkable piece of scholarship." -- Marc J. Hetherington,Author of Why Washington Won’t Work: Polarization, Political Trust, and the Governing Crisis"Garretson provides a compelling, multi-method account of the role of the gay rights movement, politics, and interpersonal contact in creating this massive shift in public opinion." * Social Forces *

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Book SynopsisWhy LGBTQ+ people must resist the seduction of dignityIn 2015, when the Supreme Court declared that gay and lesbian couples were entitled to the equal dignity of marriage recognition, the concept of dignity became a cornerstone for gay rights victories. In Disrupting Dignity, Stephen M. Engel and Timothy S. Lyle explore the darker side of dignity, tracing its invocation across public health politics, popular culture, and law from the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis to our current moment. With a compassionate eye, Engel and Lyle detail how politicians, policymakers, media leaders, and even some within LGBTQ+ communities have used the concept of dignity to shame and disempower members of those communities. They convincingly show how dignityand the subsequent chase to be defined by its termsbecame a tool of the state and the marketplace thereby limiting its more radical potential. Ultimately, Engel and Lyle challenge our understanding of dignity as anTrade ReviewThis clever book critically explores the political underbelly of dignity, disrupting the cornerstone of modern LGBT rights and liberties. Creatively weaving legal, political, and cultural narratives into a powerful critique, Engel and Lyle offer a wake-up call to those who have succumbed to the seductive strains of dignity. A must-read for anyone envisioning new parameters for the LGBT movement in the coming political time. -- Susan Burgess, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Ohio UniversityThis pathbreaking book weaves together narratives from public health, popular culture, and constitutional law to understand dignity. In Engel and Lyle’s wide-ranging analysis, dignity is bared, not as an uplifting concept that promotes queer recognition and equality, but rather as a device of neoliberal discipline that divides political subjects into insiders and transgressive outsiders. Provocative and insightful, the book takes readers on a journey through criticism to a reimagination of dignity. -- Julie Novkov, co-author of American by Birth: Wong Kim Ark and the Battle for CitizenshipIn crisscrossing the humanities and social sciences, Engel and Lyle have put together a truly interdisciplinary project that speaks to many different audiences. Disrupting Dignity makes an original argument in demonstrating the rhetorical violence that ‘dignity,’ specifically, does to the queer worldmaking that happens in gay male sexual spaces. -- F. Hollis Griffin, author of Feeling Normal: Sexuality and Media Criticism in the Digital AgeIn undertaking such an ambitious, cross-disciplinary, and sweeping conceptual analysis, Engel and Lyle implicitly claim that dignity’s effects are felt everywhere; it enculturates us to accept neoliberalism’s constraints, adhere to predominant understandings of propriety regarding sexual conduct, and tread lightly within a legal system that responds to a limited range of LGBTQ+ interests. -- Matthew Dean Hindman * Journal of American Political Thought *Disrupting Dignity provides one such peek into what is to be gained by refusing dignity, and my expectation is that it will serve as a valuable resource for future scholarship and political praxis oriented toward that queer world of possibility. * Perspectives on Politics *

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Book SynopsisIn gay bars and nightclubs across America, and in gay-oriented magazines and media, the buff, macho, white gay man is exalted as the idealthe most attractive, the most wanted, and the most emulated type of man. For gay Asian American men, often viewed by their peers as submissive or too pretty,' being sidelined in the gay community is only the latest in a long line of racially-motivated offenses they face in the United States.Repeatedly marginalized by both the white-centric queer community that values a hyper-masculine sexuality and a homophobic Asian American community that often privileges masculine heterosexuality, gay Asian American men largely have been silenced and alienated in present-day culture and society. In Geisha of a Different Kind, C. Winter Han travels from West Coast Asian drag shows to the internationally sought-after Thai kathoey, or ladyboy, to construct a theory of queerness that is inclusive of the race and gender particularities of the gay Asian male experience Trade ReviewGeisha of a Different Kind bravely engages with the struggles and triumphs of Asian American gay men as they inhabit American society and its gay mainstream.A lucid study with an unflinching focus on the daily contingencies of these men's lives, this book is an important contribution to the scholarly understanding of contemporary U.S. sex/gender systems and their fraught links to racial formations. -- Martin F. Manalansan IV,author of Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the DiasporaThe sharp analysis in this book offers a way to see the deeply penetrating influence of race while offering expansive models for living in (LGBTQI) America. * American Journal of Sociology *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Geisha of a Different Kind 1. Being an Oriental, I Could Never Be Completely a Man: Gendering Asian Men 2. Sexy Like a Girl and Horny Like a Boy: Contemporary Gay "Western" Narratives about Gay "Asian" Men 3. It's Like They Don't See Us at All: Race and Racism in Gay America 4. Asian Girls Are Prettier: How Drag Queens Saved Us 5. Finding Home in Gaysian America: Constructing Gay Asian Male Identities Conclusion: Who Gets to Be Gay, Who Gets to Be Asian? References Notes Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewLegalizing LGBT Families is a must read for policy makers, lawyers, activists and LGBT parents. The book tells the important story of how same-sex families make sense of a rapidly shifting legal landscape. By foregrounding the voices of LGBT parents Baumle and Compton vividly demonstrate the dedication, creativity and detective work these parents and partners must do to secure safety and protection for their families. -- C. J. Pascoe,author of Dude, You're a FagCreatively and insightfully relying on remarkably rich data from in-depth interviews with LGBT parents and would-be parents, authors Amanda K. Baumle and DLane R. Compton meticulously document the great power that law has on LGBT families. At the same time, they also skillfully demonstrate the greater power of love: how LGBT families show resilience and resourcefulness in working with, navigating and challenging the law. -- Brian Powell,co-author of Counted Out: Same-Sex Relations and Americans' Definitions of FamilyBaumle and Compton provide an accessible and deep understanding of how LGBT parents negotiate the law across contexts, even in the face of restrictive and prohibitive policies. This book will appeal not only to sexualities scholars and legal theorists, but also to LGBT parents who want to better understand the obstacles on the path to parenthood. * Gender & Society *The book succeeds in showing what various same-sex couples did to ensure that both parents were legally recognized. The stories told by the study's subjects are interesting and provide insight into why they took the actions they did. * New York Journal of Books *[The] attention to how legal context combines with individual characteristics and social interactions to produce legal consciousness represents a significant contribution to both legal consciousness studies and the literature on LGBT families.[T]he books empirical contribution is substantial, and it holds continuing policy relevance even after the extension of marriage rights nationwide. * American Journal of Sociology *

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Book SynopsisA different look at heterosexuality in the twenty-first centuryA straight white girl can kiss a girl, like it, and still call herself straighther boyfriend may even encourage her. But can straight white guys experience the same easy sexual fluidity, or would kissing a guy just mean that they are really gay? Not Gay thrusts deep into a world where straight guy-on-guy action is not a myth but a reality: there's fraternity and military hazing rituals, where new recruits are made to grab each other's penises and stick fingers up their fellow members' anuses; online personal ads, where straight men seek other straight men to masturbate with; and, last but not least, the long and clandestine history of straight men frequenting public restrooms for sexual encounters with other men. For Jane Ward, these sexual practices reveal a unique social space where straight white men canand dohave sex with other straight white men; in fact, she argues, to do so reaffirms rather thaTrade ReviewWards book is confident and theoretically well-informed, and offers a rich, often counterintuitive and thought-provoking tour through straight white mens homosexual activities and their shifting meanings in history, in the military, in fan fiction, in French kissing among Hells Angel members, as well as in the accounts of pop psychological experts who assure straight men having sex with other men that they arenot gay. In short, this is cultural studies at its best. * Times Higher Education *[Not Gay] provides a compelling and intriguing argument, that, rather than erasing queer identities, complicates the concept of identity itself. * The Society Pages *What I love about this book is that it expands our notions about what it means to be human. * Women’s Studies Quarterly *The title of Jane Wards book is not meant to be ironic. Her argument is that while sexual activity between straight white men does take place, it doesnt mean that the participants are gay. The book is about exploring the circumstances under which this situation can be said to arise. * The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review *A key contribution of the book is its documentation of the freedom and power enjoyed by straight white men to define what 'not gay'and 'real'homosexuality looks like and in what circumstances these terms are applied . . . well-written and direct in both its presentation and synthesis of a range of materials. * Qualitative Sociology *[]Not Gay, an insightful treatise on the nature of heterosexual male interaction with other men, addresses many of the stereotypes and assumptions associated with straight and gay men. The book also skillfully analyzes the often fluid nature of sexuality, race, privilege, and the taboo crossover behavior between sexually active men of opposing preferences. * The Bay Area ReporterWard writes with refreshing candor that other readers will likely appreciate By drawing on multiple forms of evidence, she offers a fascinating reconsideration of how we think about mens sexuality. * Men and Masculinities *Rather than focusing so much on sexual orientation, or trying to unmask the feelings of these men, who position themselves as heterosexual yet engage in same-sex sexual behavior, Ward turns her attention to the ways in which certain organizations use homosexual acts to further men's investment in heterosexuality, hypermasculinity and homosociality in order to build lasting, strong bonds and friendships and to reassert white manhood. * Metapsychology *This fascinating book explores the worlds of white men who have sex with other white men and yet identify as straight. * Pacific Standard *Ward's significant contribution to the current discourse on sexual fluidity lies in her deep reflection on how self-identified straight men construct an identity where context-specific, same-sex, sexual behavior can be incorporated into an otherwise white, straight, masculine identity. * PsycCRITQUES *Ward's idea that our cultural understanding of men's sexuality has been way too simplistic for way too long is fundamentally sound and refreshing. Ward's research suggests she's well on her way to enacting the change she intended with her writing. Greater understanding of any cultural phenomenon is only a good thing for the world. * Gawker.com *With a lot of nuanced arguments and a provocative, corrective thesis,Not Gayis undoubtedly a book that demands to be read. * Gender & Society *Listed on Gift Guide 2015: LBGT Titles to Round out Your Holiday Shopping Lists: Plenty of straight guys have sex with other men while protesting vehemently that they are & not gay. This provocative book is an attempt to understand that phenomenon. * Gift Guide 2015 *Not Gay is nothing less than a breath of fresh air. This book is certain to change the way that we think about heterosexualitys relations with the homoerotic. -- Roderick Ferguson,author of Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color CritiqueClear-eyed and unsqueamish, Not Gay defiantly insists that sex between contemporary American straight white men is in fact meaningful sex that can'tand shouldn'tjust be hand-waved away. Jane Ward provides a timely and convincing corrective. -- Hanne Blank,author of Virgin: The Untouched HistoryNot Gayopens up a discussion of male sexual fluidity that is real and needed. * Bitch Magazine *Ward presents a critical piece missing from GBLTQ studies: the examination of white homoerotic activity within heterosexuality...Ward exposes the cultural construct of heterosexuality as it applies to men and women, illuminating the patriarchal and gendered roles assigned to gay and not-gay men and women. [] A valuable study for those interested in gender and GBLTQ studies. Summing Up: Essential. * Choice *Table of Contents1.Nowhere Without It: The Homosexual Ingredient in the Making of Straight White Men 2. A Century of Not-Gay Sex 3. Here's How You Know You're Not Gay: The Popular Science of Heterosexual Fluidity 4. Average Dudes, Casual Encounters: White Homosociality and Heterosexuality Authenticity 5. Haze Him!: White Masculinity, Anal Resilience, and the Erotic Spectacle of Repulsion 6. Against Gay Love: This One Goes Out to the Queers Acknowledgments Notes Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisArgues that significant barriers to family-making exist for lesbian mothers of color in the United StatesOne might be tempted, in the afterglow of Obergefell v. Hodges, to believe that the battle has been won, that gays and lesbians fought a tough fight and finally achieved equality in the United States through access to legal marriage. But that narrative tells only one version of a very complex story about family and citizenship. Queering Family Trees explores the lived experience of queer mothers in the United States, drawing on over one hundred interviews with African American, Latina, Native American, white, and Asian American lesbian mothers living in a range of socioeconomic circumstances to show how they have navigated family-making. While the legalization of same-sex marriage and adoption in 2015 has provided avenues toward equality for some couples, structural and economic barriers have meant that othersespecially queer women of color who often have fewer financial resourcesTrade Review"For those looking to read a comprehensive and critical analysis of the laws and policies that have historically shaped—and continue to shape—families in unequal ways based on the structures of race, gender, class, sexuality, nationality, and other inequalities, Queering Family Trees is a worthwhile read ... an important resource for understanding how lesbians create their families within the context of, and despite, and laws and policies largely meant to keep their families from forming, and invisible once created. At its very basic level, Queering Family Trees encourages us as readers to rethink how to construct our own family trees, and within the confined structure of the family tree, who we include and who we render invisible as 'family.'" * Social Forces *"Patton-Imani’s historical narrative-based exploration forces us to think about the roads not taken, the intersecting side roads of welfare, immigration, adoption, and marginalized families, from the 1990’s through Obergefell." * Jotwell *

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Book SynopsisOn June 28, 1970, two thousand gay and lesbian activists in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago paraded down the streets of their cities in a new kind of social protest, one marked by celebration, fun, and unashamed declaration of a stigmatized identity. Forty-five years later, over six million people annually participate in 115 Pride parades across the United States. They march with church congregations and college gay-straight alliance groups, perform dance routines and marching band numbers, and gather with friends to cheer from the sidelines. With vivid imagery, and showcasing the voices of these participants, Pride Parades tells the story of Pride from its beginning in 1970 to 2010. Though often dismissed as frivolous spectacles, the author builds a convincing case for the importance of Pride parades as cultural protests at the heart of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Weaving together interviews, archival reports, quantitative data, and ethnographic observTrade Review"[A]n important study." * Bay Area Reporter *"Over the past three decades, Pride parades have become annual rituals for making LGBT identity visible in cities and towns across the United States. Scholars of social movements have fiercely debated the significance of cultural protest.In this meticulously researched and engagingly written book, Bruce sheds light on this debate by demonstrating that cultural protest can take place both alongside and apart from political activism.Pride parades culturally anchor LGBT communities through performances such as gay marching bands and choruses, drag shows, dyke parades, and queer weddings.But, as Bruces analysis reveals, they have had lasting impact by challenging cultural meanings and public attitudes toward LGBT people" -- Verta Taylor,Co-author of Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret"LGBT pride parades are many things at oncecultural protests, solidarity parties, visibility tools, commercial opportunitiesand Pride Parades offers a useful tour through their complexities, impact, and pleasures." -- Joshua Gamson,author of Modern Families: Extraordinary Journeys to Kinship"Pride is at the heart of most social movements, and nothing embodies it better than a joyous public parade. This is a charming, stirring book, one of the best yet about the modern LGBT movement." -- James M. Jasper,author of Protest: A Cultural Introduction to Social Movements"Bruce not only provides an entertaining and informative history of gay pride parades which have become standard fare worldwide, but in doing so has employed a new and effective prism through which to view and explain the subtle and complicated aspects of the history of the lesbian and gay rights movement in the US." * Choice *"The account is extremely interesting. It is McFarland Bruces in-depth interviews with some of the first organizers, who detail their struggles to find the frameworks that would move public opinion and their efforts to undercut and destroy laws discriminating LGBT people that make the book fascinating." * Mobilization *

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Book SynopsisA personal, intimate account of the extraordinary ways that today's families are being created. From adoption and assisted reproduction, to gay and straight parents, coupled and single, and multi-parent families, the stories in Modern Families explain how individuals make unconventional families by accessing a broad range of technological, medical and legal choices that expand our definitions of parenting and kinship. Joshua Gamson introduces us to a child with two mothers, made with one mother's egg and the sperm of a man none of them has ever met; another born in Ethiopia, delivered by his natural grandmother to an orphanage after both his parents died in close succession, and then to the arms of his mother, who is raising him solo. These tales are deeply personal and political. The process of forming these families involved jumping tremendous hurdlessocial conventions, legal and medical institutionswith heightened intention and inventiveness, within and across multiple inequities anTrade Review"These 'bedtime stories' should expand the hearts and minds of readers. Josh Gamson's exquisitely rendered tales of brave new family-making routes to contemporary parenthood and kinship aim to advance the dream of reproductive freedom." -- Judith Stacey,author of Unhitched: Love, Marriage, and Family Values from West Hollywood to Western China"Modern Families is about people who attempt to create an ordinary child through extraordinary means.Their journey startsand their childs Origin Story beginsby navigating the worlds of assisted reproduction, new forms of co-parenting and global adoption. In doing so, these families challenge boundaries of traditional kinship and intimacies. Featured tales of parenthood are told against a backdrop of rapidly changing advances in biomedicine, the expansion of the Internet and globalizing markets. Josh Gamson, a gifted writer, delivers a provocative and memorable book." -- Rosanna Hertz,author of Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice"Both seriously passionate about his cause and irrepressibly funny, Gamson takes us into the new world of unconventional family making. Making his way past the wagging fingers, he takes important new questions to the public square. If two men want a baby, whose egg and womb will it be, and what will be their relationships to the two women involved? How do we buy genes or borrow wombs or adopt children without letting the market take over the story and meaning? Modern Families is a deeply compassionate voyage into uncharted territory." -- Arlie Hochschild,author of The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times"In this book, both carefully observed and deeply felt, Joshua Gamson gives voice to the changing nature of family in modern America. The new relationships he describes are complicated and sometimes difficult, but also suffused with love. This beautifully constructed and often hilarious manifesto rings with hope for a society in which everyone is free not only to marry but also to designate as family whomever he or she chooses." -- Andrew Solomon,author of Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity"These family making journeys raise hard questions, but offer no formulaic answers. These are stories of choices made consciously and sometimes uncomfortably to create and combine lives amidst the messy human realities of desire, commerce, science, faith, community and family. This collection is not a roadmap; it is a companion for all those who choose to navigate the world of modern kinship." -- from the Foreword by Melissa Harris-Perry"[T]hese tales area warmhearted and normalizing look at some rare kinds of families." * Choice *"[A] fascinating look at the remarkable range of experiences that is broadening the very idea of family." * Booklist *"Gamson successfully weaves together the personal and the academic throughout the book. He takes personal stories and situates them in more complicated institutions and social structures." * Brain Child Magazine *"The various stories of family creation told inModern Families--the struggles and the successes--are quite moving." * Brain, Child Magazine *"[Gamson] shares their tales with an engaging, gently humorous, and at times poetic style. At the same time, he also teases out the connections between individual family stories and the social systems in which they are immersed." * Philadelphia Gay News *"What is so deft aboutModern Familiesis the ease with which Gamson weaves together individual stories about creating families with academic research about the process, from single parenthood to gay parenting to reproductive technologieshe describes the often heart-wrenching emotional and technological lengths they had to go to. There are moments in all these accounts that will bring you to tears." * In These Times *"Rich in dramatic tensions, private passions and public and political moral complexities, these 'creation stories' of having children in unusual family contexts make the famous tale of descending from Lady Bracknell's handbag pale in comparison." * Times Higher Education *"InModern Families, Gamson offers both the personal and the critical perspectives. The stories of the journeys to kinship are beautifully rendered, novelistic page-turners. They are told, though, in context of the overarching social forces and disparities." * PsychCentral.com *"Takes the reader on an intimate journey through some of the many extraordinary pathways to parenthood available in the early twenty-first century." * Sociological Forum *Table of Contentsvii CONTENTS Foreword by Melissa Harris-Perry ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: Impertinent Questions 1 1 Reba, Live! 18 2 Stranger Things Have Happened 51 3 Birth Control 83 4 The Kids in the Pictures 108 5 My New Kentucky Baby 139 6 Queer Conceptions 171 Conclusion: Bedtime Stories for a New Generation 203 Notes 215 Index 225 About the Author 235

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Book SynopsisHonorable Mention, 2018 Distinguished Book Award presented by the American Sociological Association's Sociology of Sexualities SectionThe first inside look at gay gang members.Many people believe that gangs are made up of violent thugs who are in and out of jail, and who are hyper-masculine and heterosexual. In The Gang's All Queer, Vanessa Panfil introduces us to a different world. Meet gay gang members sometimes referred to in popular culture as homo thugs whose gay identity complicates criminology's portrayal and representation of gangs, gang members, and gang life. In vivid detail, Panfil provides an in-depth understanding of how gay gang members construct and negotiate both masculine and gay identities through crime and gang membership. The Gang's All Queer draws from interviews with over 50 gay gang- and crime-involved young men in Columbus, Ohio, the majority of whom are men of color in their late teens and early twenties, as well as on-the-ground eTrade ReviewThe Gang's All Queer not only provides an exciting and rich description of gay gang life, but it exposes the ease with which we'd heretofore seen gangs as an entirely (unexamined) heterosexual enterprise. A startling and essential book. -- Michael Kimmel,author of Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an EraThe Gangs All Queer offers a treasure trove of insights for gang scholars, but more importantly, demonstrates how much we all have to gain by embracing the queer criminological turn. -- Jody Miller,author of Getting Played: African American Girls, Urban Inequality, and Gendered ViolenceThis book makes a substantial contribution to queer criminology. The book artfully shifts from the conception of gays as victims of hate crime to gays as agents and offenders, all while challenging troubling racist stereotypes of queer and Black masculinities. The conversations that this book can facilitate will greatly impact how we think about crime and criminology, while developing queer, black, and racialized-inclusive criminological research. -- Wesley Crichlow,author of Buller Men and Bwatty BoysA fascinating and eye-opening portrait of young queer men involved in this countrys gang underworld, which is typically associated with hypermasculinity. . . .The book dives deep into the complexities of what it means to grow up queer in the hood and discusses how through gangs, disadvantaged youths can unite, feel empowered, and create their own families of support and protection even across lines of sexual identity. * The Advocate *Panfil...let[s] her informants give voice to their lives and concerns. * The Gay & Lesbian Review *An interesting take on a world that never makes the headlines.Not only did Panfil have access to a group of men who were willing to tell all, she fully used that access to understand why a gay man would turn to a group thats stereotypically anti-gay. This leads to a bigger picture and larger questions of violence and closeting, as well as problems with being black, gay and gangster. * Washington Blade *Panfil’s text shines a warm sharp light on the complex politics of masculinity and sexual identity among gang-involved men… Through a combination of methodological rigour, human engagement and stylistic verve, Panfil portrays a fluid repertoire of responses to the tension between masculinity and sexuality that exposes not only gang masculinity but the gang itself as a fragile construct. -- British Journal of CriminologyAriveting look at identity construction, the qualities of 'real'men, boundary maintenance (the things we do to present ourselves as wed truly like to be seen), and so many other nuanced components of the gay criminal lifestyle.If the highest praise is reserved for books that cause us to question deeply held beliefs, this book ranks among the best. * Foreword Reviews *A gem of contemporary sociology: a potent reminder of the discipline's power to work past a culture's assumptions and, in the process, to articulate the reach and influence of those assumptions . . . its influence is likely to eventually spread far beyond the academy. * Pacific Standard *Panfil seeks to complicate the popular narratives surrounding gang members and the hypermasculine, hyper-heterosexual lives they lead. . .the book functions as an important tool in the recognition and the dismantling of systems that lead to the marginalization, poverty, and violence that [these]menface. * Popmatters *Panfilinserts herself into the underground of an underground . . . to better understand the experiences of gay men in the hypermasculine context of gang life. Complicates assumptions that male gang members and active offenders are exclusively heterosexual and . . . paves the way for a more in-depth understanding of a marginalized community. * Publishers Weekly *The Gang’s All Queer offers a vivid and textured exploration of gay gang life that shatters popular and academic assumptions about the people who join gangs and the reasons that motivate their sustained participation in them … Panfil effectively illuminates the tenuous tightrope that gay, bisexual, and queer gang members navigate to earn respect and protect their reputations in a culture defined almost exclusively by its toxic hypermasculinity … The Gang’s All Queer establishes a new agenda in the sociology of gangs that provokes a necessary reconsideration of how scholars and activists study gangs, queer identities, and black masculinities. -- American Journal of Sociology

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Book SynopsisHow homophobic backlash unexpectedly strengthened mobilization for LGBT political rights in post-communist Europe While LGBT activism has increased worldwide, there has been strong backlash against LGBT people in Eastern Europe. Although Russia is the most prominent anti-gay regime in the region, LGBT individuals in other post-communist countries also suffer from discriminatory laws and prejudiced social institutions. Combining an historical overview with interviews and case studies in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, Conor O'Dwyer analyzes the development and impact of LGBT movements in post-communist Eastern and Central Europe. O'Dwyer argues that backlash against LGBT individuals has had the paradoxical effect of encouraging stronger and more organized activism, significantly impacting the social movement landscape in the region. As these peripheral Eastern and Central European countries vie for inclusion or at least recognition in the increasingly LGBT-frTrade ReviewReaders will learn a great deal about activist groups in those countries, and will understand the role “Europeanization” had on the LGBT movement after the fall of communism … This book will best serve graduate students, faculty, and practitioners in politics. * Choice *This book is an ambitious, mixed-method examination of LGBT activism in postcommunist East-Central Europe that makes the counterintuitive argument that backlash to international pressures can be constructive to a social movement’s development... Coming Out of Communism is a tour de force in comparative analysis, interrogating civil society—which is notoriously difficult to study—and covering issues often ignored by the field. * Perspectives on Politics *In this masterful and timely study, ODwyer shows us how backlash can paradoxically benefit the domestic organizing capacity of LGBT rights advocates. This is a novel and compelling argument, substantiated by meticulously documented contention around those rights in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe. In crafting this argument, ODwyer demonstrates the great potential that the often-ignored study of LGBT politics offers for understanding a host of theoretical debates pertinent to political scientists. As unfettered populism and nationalism shake the core of liberal democracies, this book is needed more than ever, because it provides a sliver of hope in times of great peril for the most vulnerable among us. -- Phillip M. Ayoub,Author of When States Come Out: Europe's Sexual Minorities and the Politics of VisibilityWhy has LGBT rights activism flourished in some post-communist states and floundered in others following accession to the European Union? How come joining the EU was, in some places, accompanied by increasingly intolerant public attitudes toward sexual minorities, rather than acceptance? In Coming Out of Communism, Conor ODwyer solves these puzzles, highlighting the role of homophobic backlash in provoking stronger organizing for LGBT rights in the region.Anyone interested in LGBT issues, social movements, or the impact of transnational institutions on domestic politics, will undoubtedly enjoy learning from ODwyers keen analysis and intriguing field research in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. -- Valerie Sperling,Author of Sex, Politics, and Putin: Political Legitimacy in RussiaCompelling and illuminating, especially where O’Dwyer’s local informants, observation, and research blends with synthesis from area-specific scholarship. * Slavic Review *

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Book SynopsisLGBTQ kids reveal what it's like to be young and queer today Growing Up Queer explores the changing ways that young people are now becoming LGBT-identified in the US. Through interviews and three years of ethnographic research at an LGBTQ youth drop-in center, Mary Robertson focuses on the voices and stories of youths themselves in order to show how young people understand their sexual and gender identities, their interest in queer media, and the role that family plays in their lives. The young people who participated in this research are among the first generation to embrace queer identities as children and adolescents. This groundbreaking and timely consideration of queer identity demonstrates how sexual and gender identities are formed through complicated, ambivalent processes as opposed to being natural characteristics that one is born with. In addition to showing how youth understand their identities, Growing Up Queer describes how young people navigate queerTrade ReviewMary Robertson...make[s] a reader want to...just enjoy the teens she meets. Theres life in them, deep introspection and philosophical thought, as well as acceptance covered slightly with the scabs of perseverance. Their voices are real and need no explaining. They offer hope. * Washington Blade *Illuminating...Robertson examine[s] how youth today form queer identities.This accessibly written inquiry will be of interest to queer readers, sociologists, and gender studies enthusiasts alike. * Publishers Weekly *A rational and thoughtful examination of the evolving nature of the LGBTQ identification process in children and adolescents. … a groundbreaking and timely book that reveals the complicated and ambivalent nature of the identification process. Robertson argues that queer identity is not solely about gender and/or sexual identity, but is instead an intersectional bouillabaisse of race, class, ability, and more. Growing Up Queer also looks at the heartbreaking social inequality of queerness, where society accepts some kinds of LGBTQ identification but still rejects others it does not find palatable or sufficiently socially compliant. By using their own words, Robertson gives voice to their stories from their own point of view. This is a refreshing yet deep examination of the process of identification, how it has evolved, and future prospects for change and inclusion. -- The AdvocateRobertson shows the mechanisms through which binary conceptions of gender are reinforced, and she examines the intersectional effects of race, class and ability … The book’s main strength lies in rich ethnography and detailed accounts of young people. The methodological discussions are especially nuanced, and the rich histories add to our understanding of what it means to grow up queer today * Choice *Robertson, rather artfully, nestles her work into the empty space in LGBTQ youth research; how youth become gendered, how they become sexual, and how they come to embrace the identity language that fits them with the most precision. Robertson not only adds to the existing research, but also weaves in and out of it, highlighting its relevance, but also indicates where it proves to be archaic. -- Journal of Youth and AdolescenceWith clarity and rich detail, Robertson tells the story of growing up queer and the community organizations and institutions that buoy today's LGBT youth. It is a deeply engaging account of both the dignities and indignities of becoming queer, leaving us with a more complicated portrait of youth resilience and risk. -- Amy L. Best, Author of Fast-Food Kids: French Fries, Lunch Lines and Social TiesThis book works well as an introduction to queer theory, and what is meant by queer as an anti-identification. Growing Up Queer would serve well for both advanced undergraduate and introductory graduate courses focusing on queer theory, gender and sexuality, and qualitative methods. The text also works well in demonstrating young people’s agentic role in constructing their own gender and sexual subjectivities while also demonstrating processes of socialization, paying mind to how gender and sexuality are also done to us, not simply who we are. -- Gender & SocietyWhereas a wide swath of scholarly and mainstream attention to LGBTQ youth has emphasized either their vulnerability or their resilience, Robertson challenges this binary by serving as a conduit for queer youth’s voices and experiences that reflect much more complicated realities. * American Journal of Sociology *

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Book SynopsisA critical reader of the history of marriage understands that it is an institution that has always been in flux. It is also a decidedly complicated one, existing simultaneously in the realms of religion, law, and emotion. And yet recent years have seen dramatic and heavily waged battles over the proposition of including same sex couples in marriage. Just what is at stake in these battles?License to Wed examines the meanings of marriage for couples in the two first states to extend that right to same sex couples: California and Massachusetts. The two states provide a compelling contrast: while in California the rights that go with marriageinheritance, custody, and so forthwere already granted to couples under the state's domestic partnership law, those in Massachusetts did not have this same set of rights. At the same time, Massachusetts has offered civil marriage consistently since 2004; Californians, on the other hand, have experienced a much more turbulent legal path. And yet, same-sTrade Review"InLicense to Wed: What Legal Marriage Means to Same-Sex Couples, Richman takes on the legal ramifications of marriage for same-sex and queer identifying couples in Massachusetts and California. In 2004, the Supreme Court found that same-sex couples had the right to marry. After the glow of equality wore off, lawyers and couples in California and Massachusetts were left with questions about how far their rights extended. This book looks to answer those questions." -- Kitty Drexel * Edge *"Richman fully grasps how marriage plays out differently for same-sex couples. She commences her book with an erudite history of the gay-marriage movement, capturing the community politics of assimilation and marginalization, as well as the larger societal debates, that provide the context for her subjects' motivations . . . . Her book provides essential insights about marriage that every family lawyer working with same-sex couples needs to understand to fully grasp their clients' situation and provide them effective representation." -- Frederick Hertz * California Lawyer *"Richmans study is thorough and written in an unaffected, judicious style. Her analysis demonstrates that same-sex couples who are able to marry legally often find transcendent meaning in the experience. Given that most states prohibit same-sex couples from being legally married, License to Wed adds compelling personal reasons to the legal arguments for the validity of the struggle for marriage equality." * The Gay and Lesbian Review *"This book addresses a timely and still evolving issue with directness and sensitivity while rigorously examining the legal basis for same-sex marriage." * Library Journal *"This is a carefully researched and skillfully written book which makes important contributions to the literatures on legal consciousness, law and emotion, and same-sex marriage. Richman gives us one of the first detailed descriptions of the experiences and views of same-sex couples who entered legal marriages in the U.S., and her account is both highly readable and intellectually sophisticated." -- Kathleen E. Hull,author of Same-Sex Marriage: The Cultural Politics of Love and Law"License to Wed is a wonderfully rich, deep, and surprising book that will change your understanding of why gay couples have fought so hard to marry. Others have explored the legal and political battles behind these struggles, but Richman pushes us to deeper ground, where the personal and political meanings of marriage intersect and diverge in unexpected ways. This is a masterful and original work that will require both conservatives and progressives to evaluate the marriage equality movement in new ways." -- Shannon Minter * National Center for Lesbian Rights *"Richman offers valuable insight into the relationship between the legal, the personal, and the societal. Richman contributes to the same-sex marriage literature by offering further examples of some themes already prevalent in the literature, while offering new explications of couples experiences as well." * Sex Roles *"The book is well organized and written in an engaging, non-technical manner, making it accessible to both academic audiences and well-educated general readers. A genuinely good read, Richmans timely contribution to the understanding of same-sex marriage (and marriage more generally) will appeal especially to students of legal studies, political science, and sociology." * Choice *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Preface: Putting a Face on the Debate 1. Introduction: Situating the Meanings of Marriage 2. The Road to Same-Sex Marriage: The Beginning 3. The Rite as Right: Marriage as Material Right, Marriage as Strategy 4. Marriage as Protest: The Political Dimensions of Marital Motivation 5. Marriage as Validation: Subjects before (and after) the Law 6. Making It Personal: Marriage, Emotion, and Love inside and outside the Law 7. Conclusion: The Multiple Meanings of Marriage Appendix 1: Survey Instrument Appendix 2: Overview of Survey Findings NotesIndexAbout the Author

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Book SynopsisLGBTQ kids reveal what it's like to be young and queer today Growing Up Queer explores the changing ways that young people are now becoming LGBT-identified in the US. Through interviews and three years of ethnographic research at an LGBTQ youth drop-in center, Mary Robertson focuses on the voices and stories of youths themselves in order to show how young people understand their sexual and gender identities, their interest in queer media, and the role that family plays in their lives. The young people who participated in this research are among the first generation to embrace queer identities as children and adolescents. This groundbreaking and timely consideration of queer identity demonstrates how sexual and gender identities are formed through complicated, ambivalent processes as opposed to being natural characteristics that one is born with. In addition to showing how youth understand their identities, Growing Up Queer describes how young people navigate queerTrade ReviewMary Robertson...make[s] a reader want to...just enjoy the teens she meets. Theres life in them, deep introspection and philosophical thought, as well as acceptance covered slightly with the scabs of perseverance. Their voices are real and need no explaining. They offer hope. * Washington Blade *Illuminating...Robertson examine[s] how youth today form queer identities.This accessibly written inquiry will be of interest to queer readers, sociologists, and gender studies enthusiasts alike. * Publishers Weekly *A rational and thoughtful examination of the evolving nature of the LGBTQ identification process in children and adolescents. … a groundbreaking and timely book that reveals the complicated and ambivalent nature of the identification process. Robertson argues that queer identity is not solely about gender and/or sexual identity, but is instead an intersectional bouillabaisse of race, class, ability, and more. Growing Up Queer also looks at the heartbreaking social inequality of queerness, where society accepts some kinds of LGBTQ identification but still rejects others it does not find palatable or sufficiently socially compliant. By using their own words, Robertson gives voice to their stories from their own point of view. This is a refreshing yet deep examination of the process of identification, how it has evolved, and future prospects for change and inclusion. -- The AdvocateRobertson shows the mechanisms through which binary conceptions of gender are reinforced, and she examines the intersectional effects of race, class and ability … The book’s main strength lies in rich ethnography and detailed accounts of young people. The methodological discussions are especially nuanced, and the rich histories add to our understanding of what it means to grow up queer today * Choice *Robertson, rather artfully, nestles her work into the empty space in LGBTQ youth research; how youth become gendered, how they become sexual, and how they come to embrace the identity language that fits them with the most precision. Robertson not only adds to the existing research, but also weaves in and out of it, highlighting its relevance, but also indicates where it proves to be archaic. -- Journal of Youth and AdolescenceWith clarity and rich detail, Robertson tells the story of growing up queer and the community organizations and institutions that buoy today's LGBT youth. It is a deeply engaging account of both the dignities and indignities of becoming queer, leaving us with a more complicated portrait of youth resilience and risk. -- Amy L. Best, Author of Fast-Food Kids: French Fries, Lunch Lines and Social TiesThis book works well as an introduction to queer theory, and what is meant by queer as an anti-identification. Growing Up Queer would serve well for both advanced undergraduate and introductory graduate courses focusing on queer theory, gender and sexuality, and qualitative methods. The text also works well in demonstrating young people’s agentic role in constructing their own gender and sexual subjectivities while also demonstrating processes of socialization, paying mind to how gender and sexuality are also done to us, not simply who we are. -- Gender & SocietyWhereas a wide swath of scholarly and mainstream attention to LGBTQ youth has emphasized either their vulnerability or their resilience, Robertson challenges this binary by serving as a conduit for queer youth’s voices and experiences that reflect much more complicated realities. * American Journal of Sociology *

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Book SynopsisExamines the impact of marriage equality on the future of LGBT rightsIn persuading the Supreme Court that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, the LGBT rights movement has achieved its most important objective of the last few decades. Throughout its history, the marriage equality movement has been criticized by those who believe marriage rights were a conservative cause overshadowing a host of more important issues. Now that nationwide marriage equality is a reality, everyone who cares about LGBT rights must grapple with how best to promote the interests of sexual and gender identity minorities in a society that permits same-sex couples to marry. This book brings together 12 original essays by leading scholars of law, politics, and society to address the most important question facing the LGBT movement today: What does marriage equality mean for the future of LGBT rights?After Marriage Equality explores crucial and wide-ranging social, political, and legal issues confTrade Review"Terrific! Balls book is a gift to readers interested in LGBT rights and many critical social and civil rights questions of our time. Its outstanding collection of expert authors advances a well-rounded and well-grounded interdisciplinary framework for thinking about the future." -- Suzanne B. Goldberg,Herbert and Doris Wechsler Clinical Professor of Law, Columbia University"What a timely and impressive collection this is! . . . Asks important and timely questions about the future of the LGBT movement and addresses them with analytical rigor and insight. Assuming that same-sex marriage is legalized in the United States, just what would this development mean for the future of the LGBT movement in the United States and globally? And what important organizing and policy work will still need to be accomplished? What challenges should be prioritized and why? This book interrogates these questions and more from an array of diverse perspectives and it should be of interest to teachers, scholars, activists, and citizens. It is an invaluable contribution to the literature." -- Craig Rimmerman,Hobart and William Smith Colleges"Written for students, activists, and academics alike, this highly readable and engaging collection takes on the most important question now facing the LGBT movementnow that we have marriage equality, where should we go from here? All the contributors are long-time analysts of the LGBT movement and provide a unique vantage point from which to assess the future directions of the LGBT movement. They provide not only their analysis, but their advice for the future, which should make this mandatory reading for anyone who cares about the future of LGBT politics." -- Mary Bernstein,University of Connecticut"Important and timely. . . . It asks precisely the right question at precisely the right time. And, thanks to Carlos A. Balls careful work and exceptional reputation, it solicits the views of some of the most important scholars working on these questions across a range of disciplines." -- Douglas NeJaime,University of California, Los Angeles"The volume provides a compelling compilation of essays that invite us to look forward by looking backward...[A] very valuable contribution that will be important to scholars interested in the LGBT movement's future trajectories." * Sociological Forum *"After Marriage Equalityaddresses the question of what is next now that marriage is attained. Its contributors, almost all of whom are academics who study social movements,sketch out future priorities for the LGBT movement. They are sensitive to the ways that marriage campaigns created not only new possibilities but also new constraints." * The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review *"To those Americans who thoughtObergefell v. Hodgesmarked the pinnacle of success for the LGBT-rights movement, as well as to those marriage equality activists and supporters who looked forward to resting on their laurels: Guess again. Carlos A. Ball and the dozen other distinguished contributors toAfter Marriage Equality: The Future of LGBT Rightsare here to convince you that the fight for full queer rights and recognition has just begun." * Law and Politics Book Review *"The contributorslaw school and social science professorsare well versed in researching LGBT issues." * Choice Connect *

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Book SynopsisWinner, 2019 ATHE Outstanding Book Award, given by the Association for Theatre in Higher EducationWinner, 2018 Errol Hill Award in African American theater, drama, and/or performance studies, presented by the American Society for Theatre ResearchA new manifesto for performance studies on the art of queer of color worldmaking. After the Party tells the stories of minoritarian artists who mobilize performance to produce freedom and sustain life in the face of subordination, exploitation, and annihilation. Through the exemplary work of Nina Simone, Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas, Danh Vo, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Eiko, and Tseng Kwong Chi, and with additional appearances by Nao Bustamante, Audre Lorde, Martin Wong, Assata Shakur, and Nona Faustine, After the Party considers performance as it is produced within and against overlapping histories of US colonialism, white supremacy, and heteropatriarchy. Building upon the thought of José Esteban MTrade ReviewAfter the Party is indeed a manifesto: transparent in its politics and elegant in its prose, it takes the temperature of contemporary politics and offers 'a tactical manual' for survival and transformation … After the Party is a love letter to performance, excavating its efficacy beyond commodification and toward sustenance. With gorgeous prose and unapologetic politics, the author offers this book as a gift … Chambers-Letson invites us to the party, to commit to the transformative and embodied labor of performance that might bestow 'more life.' * Kareem Khubchandani, Global Performance Studies *After the Party is a necessary and fearlessly original text, which pushes against the conventions of the academic monograph, suggesting something closer to a ‘travel guide’ or ‘tactical manual.’ * This Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory *The book is exactly what we need after a year and an uprising that brought increased attention to systemic racism and the unequal distribution of life and death. It is a “travel guide and…tactical manual” (5) that could be called prophetic—but only if you have not been paying attention. This is not an indictment, but a compliment to Chambers-Letson’s work [...] Museum, memorial, and memento mori, After the Party challenges readers to imagine creative ways of living through this moment, and meaningful ways of honoring those we have lost, those we are losing, those we are going to lose. * The Black Scholar *A luminous reflection on mourning, care, and being together. Through deft and intimate analyses, Chambers-Letson assembles a group of insurgents, minoritarian performers whose meditations on survival, death, and collectivity provide the basis for a new theory of communism. These performers show us snippets of space where the violences of neoliberalism, racism, and homophobia are met with howls, defiance, and a turn toward community. These are moments where life persists and this book brings you there. -- Amber Jamilla Musser, author of Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and MasochismJoshua Chambers-Letson invites us to the party in his beautifully written consideration of the collective functions of performance for more livable black and brown, queer and trans worlds. In a series of cogent readings of various forms of performance across the twentieth century, from Nina Simone to Tseng Kwong Chi, After the Party is a treatise and a handbook for queer and trans of color survival. A timely book and an urgent read! -- C. Riley Snorton, author of Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans IdentityThis is the ongoing process of survival and sustenance that propels Chambers-Letson’s rich theorizations of minoritarian performance, which continuously labours towards 'More Life' in the ongoing work of getting free and bringing your loved ones with you while doing it, even if they have passed on. * Asian Diaspora Visual Cultures and the Americas *Chambers-Letson takes up Muñoz’s work and expands on this to focus on how to deal with the overwhelming death of queer and trans people of color. * Journal of American Culture *

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Book SynopsisAn up-close look at how porn permeates our culture Pictures of half-naked girls and women can seem to litter almost every screen, billboard, and advertisement in America. Pole-dancing studios keep women fit. Men airdrop their dick pics to female passengers on planes and trains. To top it off, the last American President has bragged about grabbing women by the pussy.This pornification of our society is what Bernadette Barton calls raunch culture. Barton explores what raunch culture is, why it matters, and how it is ruining America. She exposes how internet porn drives trends in programming, advertising, and social media, and makes its way onto our phones, into our fashion choices, and into our sex lives. From twerking and breast implants, to fake nails and push-up bras, she explores just how much we encounter raunch culture on a daily basisporn is the new normal. Drawing on interviews, television shows, movies, and social media, Barton argues that raunch culture matters not because itTrade ReviewZippy and well illustrated, this book persuasively argues that 'equating hypersexualization with sex positivity is a form of Orwellian doublespeak.' * New York Times Book Review *Barton, a professor of sociology and gender studies at Morehead State University, assembles her case against porn and pornification through a blend of pop-culture analysis and interviews (mostly with young women in their 20s)...The Pornification of America is a solid update of the traditional feminist case against porn. * The Washington Post *Once dismissed as a teenage phase, raunch culture is now a path to the presidency. Barton inspires us to take America back. Deftly teasing apart notions of sex positivity, sexual liberation, and radical feminism, she exposes raunch culture's pernicious lie: that pornification is empowerment. And not a moment too soon. -- Lisa Wade, author of American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on CampusFeel anger, rage, or hope. It is impossible to read The Pornification of America without feeling something about the thorny issues of mediated sexual desire in the 21st century. Bernadette Barton writes about the relentless capitalist commodification of female sexiness and the people who participate in it. From incels to pastors to politicians, nobody is exempt from the objectified and self-objectified raunch culture that Barton portrays. This book aims to deprogram readers’ subconscious conditioning and create the mental space to imagine a sex-positive revolution, not merely sexist shadows of that goal. -- Shira Tarrant, author of The Pornography Industry: What Everyone Needs to KnowIn The Pornification of America, Bernadette Barton offers a multi-faceted examination of what she calls 'raunch culture' in American society. She has a sophisticated awareness of feminist debates that are attuned to both protecting women's right to bodily self-determination—and our right to do what we please with our bodies—while simultaneously remaining critical of sexist and racialized cultural commodifications that can have insidious effects on women's sense of feminist freedoms. -- Lynn Chancer, author of After the Rise and Stall of American Feminism: Taking Back a RevolutionIn her timely book, Bernadette Barton shows us how raunch culture has invaded every aspect of our lives—personally, professionally and politically. This book should be used on college campuses across the country to stimulate debate on how we got here, why it matters and what we can do to change it. -- Kathleen A. Bogle, author of Hooking Up: Sex, Dating and Relationships on CampusThe Pornification of America is an excellent book for considering how sexism shapes popular culture and consequently public vernacular and social relationships. This is a great read for students or for any reader curious about the politics of raunch culture. -- Kristen Barber, author of Styling Masculinity: Gender, Class, and Inequality in the Men's Grooming IndustryBarton argues that something counterintuitive and grave is happening: as our culture becomes increasingly sexualized, it is actually becoming less sex-positive ... Barton is insightful too about the shortcomings of a culture that upholds consent as the best (and too often only) way for girls and everyone else to articulate their feelings about sex, sexual desire, and sexual attention. * Boston Review *A valuable contribution to works about sex, the pornication of culture, feminism and the objectication of women. Undoubtedly, the book has a place in every Gender and Women’s Studies class taught in college, but discussions brought up in the book should start earlier than that, with High School students and between parents/caregivers and children. * Metapsychology *

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Book SynopsisIntegrates the perspectives of queer theory, religious studies, and Christian theology into a lively conversation - both transgressive and traditional - about the fundamental questions surrounding the lives of queer Christians.Trade ReviewThough much of the work has been done on queer theory's application to Christianity, the essays here break new ground in their vernacular approaches and will find readers from undergraduates on up across disciplines from religious studies to sociology. * Choice *The authors in this volume deepen the study of sexuality in bold, complex, and poignant ways. Queer Christianities celebrates a plurality of queerness within lived Christianities of the past and present and should not be missed by those prepared for an expansive inquiry. -- Traci C. West,Professor of Ethics and African American Studies, Drew University Theological SchoolQueer Christianitieswill make a fine teaching tool for colleges and seminaries. I can imagine structuring an entire course in religion and sexuality around the themes and problems that the book examines. * Reading Religion *This is a deeply generative and resonant collection. * Sociology of Religion *This rich and diverse collection will add depth and perspective to the sociology of religion. * Sociology of Religion *This innovative anthology introduces fresh perspectives and bold assertions about Christianitys queerness and at times the unanticipated religiosity of queers. * Religious Studies Review *[T]he whole book seems to be full of conclusive contents. * Sexuality & Culture *This is a bold book … It deserves to be widely read. -- Marriage, Families, and SpiritualityTable of ContentsContents Part I: Celibacies 11 1. Celibacy Was Queer: Rethinking Early Christianity 13 David G. Hunter 2. "Queerish" Celibacy: Reorienting Marriage 25 in the Ex-Gay Movement Lynne Gerber 3. Celibate Politics: Queering the Limits 37 Anthony M. Petro 4. How Queer Is Celibacy? A Queer Nun's Story 48 Sister Carol Bernice, CHS Church Interlude I: A Congregation Embodies 53 Queer Theology Jon M. Walton Part II: Matrimonies 65 5. Two Medieval Brides of Christ: Complicating 67 Monogamous Marriage William E. Smith III 6. Gay Rites and Religious Rights: New York's First 79 Same-Sex Marriage Controversy Heather R. White 7. Beyond Procreativity: Heterosexuals Queering Marriage 91 Teresa Delgado 8. Disrupting the Normal: Queer Family Life 103 as Sacred Work Jennifer Harvey Church Interlude II: Healing Oppression Sickness 115 Yvette Flunder Part III: Promiscuities 125 9. Double Love: Rediscovering the Queerness 127 of Sin and Grace Michael F. Pettinger 10. Love Your Friends: Learning from the 137 Ethics of Relationships Mary E. Hunt 11. Calvary and the Dungeon: Theologizing BDSM 148 Nicholas Laccetti

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Book SynopsisVivid narratives, fresh insights, and new theories on where gender theory and research stand today Since scholars began interrogating the meaning of gender and sexuality in society, this field has become essential to the study of sociology. Gender Reckonings aims to map new directions for understanding gender and sexuality within a more pragmatic, dynamic, and socially relevant framework. It shows how gender relations must be understood on a large scale as well as in intimate detail. The contributors return to the basics, questioning how gender patterns change, how we can realize gender equality, and how the structures of gender impact daily life. Gender Reckonings covers not only foundational concepts of gender relations and gender justice, but also explores postcolonial patterns of gender, intersectionality, gender fluidity, transgender practices, neoliberalism, and queer theory. Gender Reckonings combines the insights of gender and sexuality scholars from different generations, fiTrade ReviewThe publication of Raewyn Connell's Gender and Power in 1987 proclaimed a new sociology of gender, from sex roles to situating gender relations in multiple fields of power. These exciting new essays refer back over three decades of theory and research, and suggest just how germinal that work was in generating new avenues of thinking about gender. -- Michael Kimmel,Author of Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an EraA refreshingly up-to-date collection of essays that covers a wide range of theories and debates, Gender Reckonings brings much needed clarity and breadth to the challenges of undoing or re-imagining gender away from its hegemonic moorings. These new essays by seasoned experts in gender and sexuality studies will be of enormous use to scholars and students alike, and are sure to become catalysts for future feminist analyses. -- Suzanna Danuta Walters,Author of The Tolerance Trap: How God, Genes, and Good Intentions are Sabotaging Gay EqualityThis collection by eminent scholars with a spectrum of styles and conceptual frameworks contributes immensely to our sociological understanding of gender theory and research. In looking back and moving forward, these authors celebrate, critique, and consider the changes and challenges of the social analysis of gender. This compelling volume demonstrates the diverse ways that contexts matter and the importance of engaging in social research for gender equality and social justice. -- Margaret Abraham,Co-editor of Contours of Citizenship: Women, Diversity, and Practices of Citizenship

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Book SynopsisCo-Winner of the 2023 Latino/a Section Best Book Award, given by the American Sociological AssociationHonorable Mention, 2024 Best Book Award, given by the Asia and Asian America section of the American Sociological AssociationThe stories of second-generation immigrant gay men coming of age in Los AngelesGrowing up in the shadow of Hollywood, the gay sons of immigrants featured in Brown and Gay in LA could not have felt further removed from a world where queerness was accepted and celebrated. Instead, the men profiled here maneuver through family and friendship circles where masculinity dominates, gay sexuality is unspoken, and heterosexuality is strictly enforced. For these men, the path to sexual freedom often involves chasing the dreams while resisting the expectations of their immigrant parentsand finding community in each other. Ocampo also details his own story of reconciling his queer Filipino American idTrade ReviewTold through stories that redefine what it means to be a gay person of color at the intersection of homophobia, sexism, and racism... the text smoothly combines personal anecdotes with thorough sociological research, spotlighting those who feel they don't fit the archetype of the ideal gay man within predominantly White queer spaces, both virtual and in-person. Ocampo should be commended for presenting the lives of queer people of color in a humane, compassionate, and informative way. An important book that showcases different models for gay men of color. * Kirkus Reviews (starred) *The intersections of race, immigration, and queerness are as much at the core of Ocampo’s book as bigger-picture analyses of masculinity. This book is the best platform to dive into the matter and reemerge feeling inspired and motivated to just be and become one’s unique self, the person one was always meant to be. * Library Journal *Brown and Gay in LA documents the challenges of growing up gay for second-generation urban Latinos and Filipinos in this insightful blend of ethnography and memoir. Ocampo creates a collective voice out of the many people he interviewed while simultaneously honoring each experience. The result is a daring and provocative portrait of a uniquely diverse generation. * Publishers Weekly *At the heart of Brown and Gay in LA is a central interior tension people whose surroundings constantly show them the many ways in which they do not belong. A professor of sociology, Anthony Christian Ocampo weaves the stories of his interlocutors with personal narrative writing and workmanlike, scholarly prose to suggest a tenderness that comes from personal history. Rather than write strictly for academics, or write a memoir that is concerned only with the self, Ocampo splits the difference. -- Jason Frank * Vulture *A nuanced perspective on this particular kind of coming-of-age: coming out, perhaps leaving home for college, finding new families in public and private spaces. Ocampo writes lovingly of gatherings that have provided gay men of color an escape not just from the judgment of traditional families but also from the cultural dominance of white West Hollywood. -- Jireh Deng * Los Angeles Times *Ocampo analyzes with great empathy the struggles of his informants as gay children of immigrants, often with non-English-speaking families, conservative values, and Roman Catholic mores. Thoughtfully evoked and beautifully narrated. -- Vernon Rosario * The Gay & Lesbian Review *A brilliant and soulful ethnography that merges probing critical analysis, social history, and cultural inquiry, with emotional clarity and dignity. Ocampo uses his own experience as a queer Filipino person as a form of intellectual insight and wisdom, thereby demonstrating how the role of the imperial, distant scholar, in contrast, leaves so many stones unturned, and how care matters in rigorous scholarship. I highly recommend this beautifully written work. * Imani Perry, author of South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation *Anthony Christian Ocampo shows us page after page that superb research deserves the artful rendering of a dedicated artist offering up the resonances of that research to hungry, wide-eyed readers. In order to actually experience, not simply explore, and definitely not exploit, the lives of Brown and Gay men in LA, Ocampo summons the artistry of our finest writers, moving us from watcher to reader to witness to this once in a generation offering. * Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir and Long Division *Anthony Ocampo has written a book for our time. Brown and Gay in LA has got it all. This elegantly written and sociologically sophisticated book skillfully explores what it means to live at the intersection of immigration, race, and LGBTQ identity. Drawing on richly developed life histories of gay Latino and Filipino men in Los Angeles, Ocampo brings to light the untold stories of young men at the margins of multiple communities who experience the blunt force of racism and homophobia while also carving out spaces of community and belonging. Timely, relevant, and original, this could well be the most important book this year. * Roberto G. Gonzales, author of Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America *Through on-the-ground research and sensitive insights, Anthony Ocampo illuminates a generation escaping the pressures to assimilate by finding liberation among one another. Brown and Gay in LA presents a vivid, rigorous, and heartfelt examination of how community can serve as a radical bulwark against colonial legacies, religious intolerance, and racial exclusion. * Albert Samaha, author of Never Ran, Never Will: Boyhood and Football in a Changing American Inner City *Anthony Ocampo has crafted a gorgeous love letter to a distinctive generation of immigrant sons. In a series of tender portraits, he invites us into the heady world of Brown and Gay Los Angeles at a time of momentous change. Ocampo gracefully fuses his dual roles as storyteller and sociologist to distill the particulars and the universals of this cohort. The result is a transformative meditation on the meanings and substance of ambition in American life. * Ellen Wu, the author of The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority *Brown gay sons of immigrants have been largely invisible in nearly all their lifeworlds — often overtly or implicitly hostile to some part of their identity — as well as in the academic worlds that would do well to learn from them. Animated by his own voice and those of his many interviewees, Anthony Ocampo fills the void with a book that is richly storied, sociologically nuanced, affectingly written, effortlessly intersectional, and painfully hopeful. * Joshua Gamson, author of Modern Families: Stories of Extraordinary Journeys to Kinship *In this beautifully written book, Ocampo vividly tells the coming-of-age stories of over 60 young Filipino and Latino gay men in Los Angeles. Their experiences navigating the perilous landscapes shaped by racism and homophobia along with the fraught expectations of masculinity are heartbreaking. * Grace Kao, co-author of The Company We Keep: Interracial Friendships and Romantic Relationships from Adolescence to Adulthood *Brown and Gay in LA is at once an incisive sociological analysis of immigration from the perspectives of race, sexuality, and geography, and an emotive account of lives forged from multiple margins. Through Anthony Ocampo’s refusal to obey generic conventions, he joins his research participants in challenging dominant narratives that make legitimate movement across borders contingent on the capacity to inhabit societal norms. The result is an urgent book that not only asserts the existence of racialized queer experiences in particular times and places, but also invites reconsideration of the possibilities created through survivance of diverse itineraries of exclusion. * Jonathan Rosa, author of Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad *Brown and Gay in LA is a beautifully written representation that many queer people of color did not have previously. Ocampo is not only a skilled sociologist, but also an excellent storyteller. His approachable writing style, coupled with sharp sociological analyses, would benefit a wide range of audience, from undergraduate students to interested public audience alike... Ocampo tells an “I see you” story of visibility and recognition, acknowledging whole humanities of these gay sons of immigrants as well as other queer racial minorities whose identities and lives are often forcibly compartmentalized and fragmented. * Sociology of Race and Ethnicity *The book takes a very personal stance, allowing readers to relate to these individuals and their lives. The well-written preface provides helpful context, explaining the author's use of certain phrases and labels. Ocampo does a very good job of presenting qualitative research on a much-needed subject. -- A. J. Ramirez, Valdosta State University * CHOICE *

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Book SynopsisIn Virtual Activism: Sexuality, the Internet, and a Social Movement in Singapore, cultural anthropologist Robert Phillips provides a detailed, yet accessible, ethnographic case study that looks at the changes in LGBT activism in Singapore in the period 1993-2019. Based on extensive fieldwork conducted with activist organizations and individuals, Phillips illustrates key theoretical ideas including illiberal pragmatics and neoliberal homonormativity that, in combination with the introduction of the Internet, have shaped the manner by which LGBT Singaporeans are framing and subsequently claiming rights. Phillips argues that the activism engaged in by LGBT Singaporeans for governmental and societal recognition is in many respects virtual. His analysis documents how the actions of activists have resulted in some noteworthy changes in the lives of LGBT Singaporeans, but nothing as grand as some would have hoped, thus indexing the not quite aspect of the virtual. Yet, VTrade Review"Virtual Activism captures the complex, somewhat opaque effects of on-line activisms, representations and communications on off-line, face-to-face activities, politics and everyday relationships in Singapore." -- David Murray, Department of Anthropology, York University"Virtual Activism is a pivotal, brilliant contribution. Weaving together a careful ethnographic analysis of national belonging, online sociality, and queer subjectivity in Singapore, Phillips reveals complex dynamics of sexuality activism, tolerance, and rejection. Anyone wishing to understand how emerging regimes of capitalism, state power, and community mobilization are transforming societies in Southeast Asia and beyond will find this book an invaluable resource." -- Tom Boellstorff, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine"Robert Phillips takes us into the pre-history of Singapore’s Pink Dot and shows us the origins of how LGBT activists mobilized the Internet to create a virtual social movement in a country that prosecutes homosexuality. His cultural anthropology captures the illiberal pragmatic environment that shapes this movement and inscribes the voices of brave activists who had pioneered new networks of visibility and solidarity. For those unfamiliar with what activism was like before Pink Dot, this book ought to be a starting point." -- Audrey Yue, Department of Communications and New Media, National University of SingaporeTable of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Figures Note on Terminology 1. Little Earthquakes 2. The “Spectral Homosexual” and the Singaporean Media 3. Reimagining of the Nation, Online 4. The Internet and A New Public Sphere 5. Pushing the Boundaries in the Physical World 6. The Illiberal Pragmatics of Activism 7. Epilogue Appendix 1 Timeline of Events Appendix 2 Updates on Activists Notes References Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisIncreasing awareness of healthcare disparities and unique health needs of LGBTQ2S people calls for a revitalization of health professional training programs. As new topics become integrated into these programs, there is a great need for a comprehensive resource that aligns with Canadian guidelines and standards of care. Caring for LGBTQ2S People identifies gaps in care and health care disparities, and provides clinicians with both the knowledge and the tools to continue to improve the health of LGBTQ2S people. Written by expert authors, this fully updated version builds on the critically praised first edition and highlights the significant social, medical, and legal progress that has occurred in Canada since 2003. The book includes general medical information and guidance that is useful for anyone providing care to LGBTQ2S people. Chapters in this edition provide background on the fundamentals of language, cultural competency, and the patient-provider relationshTable of ContentsList of Figures, Tables, and Boxes Foreword Acknowledgments 1. Why a Clinical Guide? Amy Bourns and Edward Kucharski 2. Improving Patient–Provider Relationships and Health Environments for 2SLGBTQ Patients Sydney Tam 3. History and Physical Examination Laura Stratton 4. Prevention and Screening for 2SLGBQ People Alexandre Coutin, Edward Kucharski, Amy Bourns, and Lisa Smith 5. 2SLGBTQ Children and Youth Catherine Maser and Ashley Vandermorris 6. Sexual Health Ian Armstrong and Jordan Goodridge 7. HIV Quang Nguyen 8. Mental Health Christopher Mcintosh 9. Substance Abuse Christopher (Kit) Fairgrieve 10. Reproductive Health Carrie Schram 11. Trans and Non-binary Health: Gender-Affirming Hormone Therapy and Primary Care Amy Bourns 12. Indigenous LGBTQ and Two-Spirit Health Zongwe Binesikwe Crystal Hardy 13. Older 2SLGBTQ Adults and End-of-Life Decision Making Jacqueline Gahagan, Emily Hughes, and Elise Jackson 14. Caring for 2SLGBTQ Disabled People A.J. Withers, Laura Macdonald, and Elizabeth Harrison 15. LGBTQ Newcomers in Canada Mego Nerses, Nicholas Hersh, and Carol Geller Glossary Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisIn Virtual Activism: Sexuality, the Internet, and a Social Movement in Singapore, cultural anthropologist Robert Phillips provides a detailed, yet accessible, ethnographic case study that looks at the changes in LGBT activism in Singapore in the period 1993-2019. Based on extensive fieldwork conducted with activist organizations and individuals, Phillips illustrates key theoretical ideas including illiberal pragmatics and neoliberal homonormativity that, in combination with the introduction of the Internet, have shaped the manner by which LGBT Singaporeans are framing and subsequently claiming rights. Phillips argues that the activism engaged in by LGBT Singaporeans for governmental and societal recognition is in many respects virtual. His analysis documents how the actions of activists have resulted in some noteworthy changes in the lives of LGBT Singaporeans, but nothing as grand as some would have hoped, thus indexing the not quite aspect of the virtual. Yet, VTable of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Figures Note on Terminology 1. Little Earthquakes 2. The “Spectral Homosexual” and the Singaporean Media 3. Reimagining of the Nation, Online 4. The Internet and A New Public Sphere 5. Pushing the Boundaries in the Physical World 6. The Illiberal Pragmatics of Activism 7. Epilogue Appendix 1 Timeline of Events Appendix 2 Updates on Activists Notes References Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisIn Gothic Queer Culture, Laura Westengard proposes that contemporary U.S. queer culture is gothic at its core. Using interdisciplinary cultural studies to examine the gothicism in queer art, literature, and thought—including ghosts embedded in queer theory, shadowy crypts in lesbian pulp fiction, monstrosity and cannibalism in AIDS poetry, and sadomasochism in queer performance—Westengard argues that during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries a queer culture has emerged that challenges and responds to traumatic marginalization by creating a distinctly gothic aesthetic.Gothic Queer Culture examines the material effects of marginalization, exclusion, and violence and explains why discourse around the complexities of genders and sexualities repeatedly returns to the gothic. Westengard places this queer knowledge production within a larger framework of gothic queer culture, which inherently includes theoretical texts, art, literature, performTrade Review"The real reason why Gothic Queer Culture is impossible to put down is that in addition to being meticulously argued, it is celebratory. In the spirit of Lady Gaga’s gleefully bloody and irreverent meat dress, with which Westengard opens the book, Gothic Queer Culture gracefully sidesteps moralizing judgements of the artists and writers whose challenging work it examines, choosing instead to emphasize the affirmative power of reveling in the lurid grey areas that queer artists and their work so often occupy."—Elizabeth Simins, Art Discourse“This tour-de-force of literary and cultural analysis connects eighteenth-century Gothic obsessions with traumatic realities of the twenty-first century. Queer theory, lesbian pulp fiction, the melancholy of AIDS, and sadomasochism—Laura Westengard helps us to understand these phenomena as never before.”—George E. Haggerty, distinguished professor emeritus at the University of California, Riverside “Westengard takes a common idea—that gothic is queer—and inverts it to show the effects of unacknowledged trauma on marginalized communities. Gothic Queer Culture establishes Westengard as an exciting new voice in critical trauma studies, gothic studies, and queer theory.”—Nowell Marshall, author of Romanticism, Gender, and Violence: Blake to George Sodini Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Queer Cultures and Insidious Trauma 1. Haunted Epistemologies: Gothic Queer Theory 2. Live Burial: Lesbian Pulp and the “Containment Crypt” 3. Monstrosity: Melancholia, Cannibalism, and HIV/AIDS 4. Sadomasochism: Strategic Discomfort in Trans* and Queer of Color Performance Art Conclusion: The Challenges of Neoliberalism Notes Bibliography Index

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Book Synopsis After contracting polio as a child, Sandra Gail Lambert progressed from braces and crutches to a manual wheelchair to a power wheelchair—but loneliness has remained a constant, from the wild claustrophobia of a child in body casts to just yesterday, trapped at home, gasping from pain. A Certain Loneliness is a meditative and engaging memoir-in-essays that explores the intersection of disability, queerness, and female desire with frankness and humor. Lambert presents the adventures of flourishing within a world of uncertain tomorrows: kayaking alone through swamps withalligators; negotiating planes, trains, and ski lifts; scoring free drugs from dangerous men; getting trapped in a too-deep snow drift without crutches. A Certain Loneliness is literature of the body, palpable and present, in which Lambert’s lifelong struggle with isolation and independence—complete with tiresome frustrations, slapstick moments, and grand triumphs—areTrade Review"The author knows herself well and shares thoughts, feelings, and impressions with grace and acute self-awareness. Readers will come away with a cleareyed portrait of the author through the stories of her joys, sorrows, and intimate impressions. A powerful testimony to the determination and strength necessary to persevere despite assumptions, scrutiny, and societal stigmatization."—Kirkus"A Certain Loneliness is an intriguing memoir. . . . Lambert's lessons in how she lives, how difficult every motion is when her body grows less and less useful every year, are enlightening, perhaps even necessary, for able-bodied readers. . . . That Lambert's is a vanishing condition makes her perspective unusual, but the frustration and emotional turmoil she suffers are perfectly common. Such results could stand to be better understood by the friends and loved ones of people with these conditions—or by anyone who has ever hugged a woman in a wheelchair without permission."—Katharine Coldiron, River Teeth"A Certain Loneliness is Lambert's wry, unstinting look at a life spent dealing with chronic pain and having a visibly imperfect body. . . . Lambert's body is the topography of her everyday travels. She's a sobering guide."—Nell Beram, Shelf Awareness"While Lambert's memoir shows us one woman's strength and courage in her battle to defeat fear, loneliness, and physical challenge, I'd like think this book offers more. It should make each of us question: do we build ramps for those differently able or do we simply ignore the problem and look away?"—Debbie Hagan, Brevity"Lambert's sensuous writing is not unlike the water she returns to again and again: fluid yet direct, supple and strong. A Certain Loneliness is about the failure and triumph of the body—in Lambert's life the former has often preceded the latter—and while her work is an important addition to the canon of disability studies, it should not be pigeon-holed as such. Lambert writes with a studied aloofness and matter-of-fact tone about a body that constantly generates conflict with itself and the world around it. There is a rich practicality to her wisdom, and a pure, knowing access to physicality despite that physicality’s limitations: I've only rarely seen these things so well captured on the page."—Sara Rauch, LAMBDA Literary"Through the sterling voice of this brilliant wordsmith, we bear witness to the struggle and grace of a lesbian body undiminished: the relationship with other lesbians and nature so beautiful, daring, and necessary for survival, the heart reverberates with applause."—Roberta Arnold, Sinister Wisdom“In these lyrical and elegiac essays, Sandra Lambert traces a profound relationship with nature—both the vanishing nature of the planet and the complex nature of her own philosophy. Her language is moving, intimate, and bracingly honest.”—Andrew Solomon, National Book Award–winning author of Far from the Tree“Having pushed her wheelchair past two hundred alligators, Lambert has written a brilliant and necessary account of a wise and triumphant life as a writer, activist, kayaker, lesbian lover, birder, and survivor of polio. I’m in awe of her gifts.”—Carolyn Forché, author of The Country between Us“I have loved Sandra Gail Lambert’s stunning and flexible prose for a long time and still was unprepared for the power and searing honesty of her memoir, A Certain Loneliness. This book is an act of tremendous beauty.”—Lauren Groff, author of New York Times bestseller Fates and FuriesTable of ContentsAcknowledgments 1. Solace: Three of the Places 2. The Laundromat 3. Figuring It Out 4. Well-Nourished White Child 5. Atlanta—1968 6. Sex Objects 7. Complex Math 8. Atlanta—1984 9. Becoming Lazy 10. Rolling in the Mud 11. Open-Water Swimmers 12. Pass the Hemlock 13. Poster Children 14. The Art of Budgeting 15. Mosquitoes 16. Negotiating a Life 17. Dehiscence 18. May or May Not 19. Atlanta—2007 20. The Last Period 21. Immoderation and Excess 22. Looking for the V 23. Yielding 24. I Am Here, in This Morning Light 25. Pride Goeth 26. Horror in the Okefenokee 27. I’m Fine, Thank You 28. The Blind Girl and the Cripple Get on a Plane 29. The Swimmer Source Acknowledgments

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Book Synopsis2021 Lambda Literary Awards FinalistNepantla Squared maps the lives of two transgender mestiz@s, one during the turn of the twentieth century and one during the turn of the twenty-first century, to chart the ways race, gender, sex, ethnicity, and capital function differently in different times. To address the erasure of transgender mestiz@ realities from history, Linda Heidenreich employs an intersectional analysis that critiques monopoly and global capitalism. Heidenreich builds on the work of Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of nepantleras, those who could live between and embody more than one culture, to coin the term nepantla², marking times of capitalist transition where gender was also in motion. Transgender mestiz@s, too, embodied that movement. Heidenreich insists on a careful examination of the multiple in-between spaces that construct lives between cultures and genders during in-between times of shifting empire and caTrade Review“[A] compelling contribution to how we understand trans and Latinx identities, urgently addressing the question of how gendered embodiment is conditioned by sociopolitical factors.”—Marcos Gonsalez, Los Angeles Review of Books "Well written, insightful, and thought provoking, Heidenreich's work is an important contribution to several fields, including Chicanx studies and history, and Trans studies and history. It is a must-read for those interested in the history of transmestiz@ identity and history in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands."—Yvette J Saavedra, New Mexico Historical Review“This queer Chicanx history project is everything such a project should be: a brilliant analysis with fresh and illuminating ideas and approaches, an unearthing of hidden trans stories, and an intellectual exploration of trans mestiz@ identity.”—Norma E. Cantú, Norine R. and T. Frank Murchison Professor of the Humanities at Trinity University“Nepantla Squared is a welcome and refreshing contribution to intersectional trans, queer, and feminist histories of resistant gender. Linda Heidenreich provides a new depth of context to famous stories of anti-trans violence and resistance, like those of Jack Garland and Gwen Araujo, showing how these are stories about colonialism, capitalism, and neoliberal economic policy. Heidenreich’s writing is pleasurably readable and the book is insightful and original.”—Dean Spade, author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law“Historical, materialist, and timely, this book adds new important ways of understanding trans in different historical moments and through nonbinary mestiz@ indigenous roots and routes in the Americas.”—Kale Bantigue Fajardo, author of Filipino Crosscurrents: Oceanographies of Seafaring, Masculinities, and GlobalizationTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: History as Nepantla2 Chapter One. A World Created through Motion Chapter Two. Motion-Change in the Life and Times of Jack Mugarrieta Garland Chapter Three. NAFTA and Generative Movement in the Sixth Sun Chapter Four. Motion-Change in the Life and Times of Gwen Amber Rose Araujo Chapter Five. Nepantler@s of the Sixth Sun Conclusion: Into the Sixth Sun Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisProposes that contemporary US queer culture is gothic at its core. Using interdisciplinary cultural studies to examine the gothicism in queer art, literature, and thought, Westengard argues that a queer culture has emerged that challenges and responds to traumatic marginalization by creating a distinctly gothic aesthetic.Trade Review"The real reason why Gothic Queer Culture is impossible to put down is that in addition to being meticulously argued, it is celebratory. In the spirit of Lady Gaga’s gleefully bloody and irreverent meat dress, with which Westengard opens the book, Gothic Queer Culture gracefully sidesteps moralizing judgements of the artists and writers whose challenging work it examines, choosing instead to emphasize the affirmative power of reveling in the lurid grey areas that queer artists and their work so often occupy."—Elizabeth Simins, Art Discourse“This tour-de-force of literary and cultural analysis connects eighteenth-century Gothic obsessions with traumatic realities of the twenty-first century. Queer theory, lesbian pulp fiction, the melancholy of AIDS, and sadomasochism—Laura Westengard helps us to understand these phenomena as never before.”—George E. Haggerty, distinguished professor emeritus at the University of California, Riverside “Westengard takes a common idea—that gothic is queer—and inverts it to show the effects of unacknowledged trauma on marginalized communities. Gothic Queer Culture establishes Westengard as an exciting new voice in critical trauma studies, gothic studies, and queer theory.”—Nowell Marshall, author of Romanticism, Gender, and Violence: Blake to George Sodini Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Queer Cultures and Insidious Trauma 1. Haunted Epistemologies: Gothic Queer Theory 2. Live Burial: Lesbian Pulp and the “Containment Crypt” 3. Monstrosity: Melancholia, Cannibalism, and HIV/AIDS 4. Sadomasochism: Strategic Discomfort in Trans* and Queer of Color Performance Art Conclusion: The Challenges of Neoliberalism Notes Bibliography Index

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Book Synopsis2021 Lambda Literary Awards FinalistNepantla Squared maps the lives of two transgender mestiz@s, one during the turn of the twentieth century and one during the turn of the twenty-first century, to chart the ways race, gender, sex, ethnicity, and capital function differently in different times. To address the erasure of transgender mestiz@ realities from history, Linda Heidenreich employs an intersectional analysis that critiques monopoly and global capitalism. Heidenreich builds on the work of Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of nepantleras, those who could live between and embody more than one culture, to coin the term nepantla², marking times of capitalist transition where gender was also in motion. Transgender mestiz@s, too, embodied that movement. Heidenreich insists on a careful examination of the multiple in-between spaces that construct lives between cultures and genders during in-between times of shifting empire and caTrade Review“[A] compelling contribution to how we understand trans and Latinx identities, urgently addressing the question of how gendered embodiment is conditioned by sociopolitical factors.”—Marcos Gonsalez, Los Angeles Review of Books "Well written, insightful, and thought provoking, Heidenreich's work is an important contribution to several fields, including Chicanx studies and history, and Trans studies and history. It is a must-read for those interested in the history of transmestiz@ identity and history in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands."—Yvette J Saavedra, New Mexico Historical Review“This queer Chicanx history project is everything such a project should be: a brilliant analysis with fresh and illuminating ideas and approaches, an unearthing of hidden trans stories, and an intellectual exploration of trans mestiz@ identity.”—Norma E. Cantú, Norine R. and T. Frank Murchison Professor of the Humanities at Trinity University“Nepantla Squared is a welcome and refreshing contribution to intersectional trans, queer, and feminist histories of resistant gender. Linda Heidenreich provides a new depth of context to famous stories of anti-trans violence and resistance, like those of Jack Garland and Gwen Araujo, showing how these are stories about colonialism, capitalism, and neoliberal economic policy. Heidenreich’s writing is pleasurably readable and the book is insightful and original.”—Dean Spade, author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law“Historical, materialist, and timely, this book adds new important ways of understanding trans in different historical moments and through nonbinary mestiz@ indigenous roots and routes in the Americas.”—Kale Bantigue Fajardo, author of Filipino Crosscurrents: Oceanographies of Seafaring, Masculinities, and GlobalizationTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: History as Nepantla2 Chapter One. A World Created through Motion Chapter Two. Motion-Change in the Life and Times of Jack Mugarrieta Garland Chapter Three. NAFTA and Generative Movement in the Sixth Sun Chapter Four. Motion-Change in the Life and Times of Gwen Amber Rose Araujo Chapter Five. Nepantler@s of the Sixth Sun Conclusion: Into the Sixth Sun Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisDale Scott’s career as a professional baseball umpire spanned nearly forty years, including thirty-three in the Major Leagues, from 1985 to 2017. He worked exactly a thousand games behind the plate, calling balls and strikes at the pinnacle of his profession, working in every Major League Baseball stadium, and interacting with dozens of other top-flight umpires, colorful managers, and hundreds of players, from future Hall of Famers to one-game wonders. Scott has enough stories about his career on the field to fill a dozen books, and there are plenty of those stories here. He’s not interested in settling scores, but throughout the book he’s honest about managers and players, some of whom weren’t always perfect gentlemen. But what makes Scott’s book truly different is his unique perspective as the only umpire in the history of professional baseball to come out as gay during his career. Granted, that was after decades of remaining in the closet, aTrade Review"A rollicking new memoir. . . . Scott is cheery yet candid about the indignities of umpiring."—John Swansburg, New York Times"The Umpire Is Out offers so many inside stories on great names in baseball history. Scott is honest in how he explains each encounter. He's a man you can't help but to root for in his coming years as a private (baseball) citizen. Scott truly is one of the better ambassadors of the game."—Don Laible, Bradenton Times"[The Umpire Is Out] is highly recommended as a biographical memoir of umpiring and the game itself over the past forty years, and also as a non-salacious, candid portrait of gay life in American sports over the same era. It is generous, humorous, enjoyable, and is a great source for learning about both subjects—"The Wedge," as it were, of Scott's professional and personal life."—Tim Wiles, NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture“Dale Scott was both consistent and approachable, perhaps the two most important qualities for an umpire. Dale’s personal story is inspirational, but his book also features vivid game stories from a truly great run at the top of his profession.”—David Cone“Dale’s personal story differs dramatically from those of his umpiring colleagues. And yet, what also shines through is what he and so many of us have in common: an abiding love of baseball and an appreciation for what the game has meant to our lives. This is a textured story, both entertaining and meaningful. And told with uncommon grace.”—Bob Costas“As the late, great Ernie Harwell once said to me about Dale, ‘A great umpire is like a great driver in traffic: you never notice they’re there.’ That was Dale Scott. He had a great, consistent strike zone, and I don’t recall him ever missing a call on the bases. But as good an umpire as Dale was, he’s also one of my all-time favorite people.”—Harold Reynolds“Dale Scott umpired for more than thirty years in the big leagues. He’s seen it all, and most of the best parts seem to have wound up in these pages. But heck, I’d buy the book just for the chapter on the José Bautista Bat Flip Game!”—Dan Shulman“For more than ten years, Dale Scott made me laugh every day. As a mentor, he taught me how to not only survive but excel in the Major Leagues, and I am forever grateful for his friendship and leadership. This memoir delivers the humor, excitement, and knowledge that only a true insider can provide. Make the right call and read this book!”—Dan IassognaTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Foreword by Billy Bean 1. Nutcutters, Polebenders, and Shithouses 2. Eugene 3. Playing the Game 4. “You Were Terrible!” 5. “He’s That Blind SOB” 6. Only in the Dominican 7. Getting the Call 8. When Sparky Quit Chewing 9. “Mike, Your Mom Is Blasting Me” 10. Sophomore Slump 11. For the Last Time 12. “I Can Put Two and Two Together” 13. TK 14. Hardly the First 15. “What Do You Mean, Colorful?” 16. Nolan and George 17. Hello Again, Boss 18. Jeffrey Who? 19. A Long Way from Bradenton 20. “What Flavor Was the Kool-Aid?” 21. W. 22. Like a Human Blood Clot 23. “Hell Has Frozen Over” 24. “Hey, Lou, You Missed a Spot” 25. “I Am the Walrus” 26. Postseason from Hell 27. Get the Hell Out of the Way 28. From Frank’s Friendly to Jimmy Fallon 29. Flip 30. “I Can’t Believe This Is Happening Again” 31. No Complaints, No Regrets Acknowledgments Appendix Index

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Book SynopsisTells the story of a gay preteen, his seven siblings, their violent father, overwhelmed mother, unstoppable grandmother, and the sordid array of customers they encounter at their family's roadside motel, situated in the hot, prairie town of Eunice, Louisiana.Trade ReviewIts details impressive, Stone Motel is a layered memoir, both nostalgic and forthright in recalling family struggles. One of the three best gay biography books of all time

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Book SynopsisArgues that the themes that generate the most anxiety about adolescent culture - queer visibility, risk taking, HIV/AIDS, dystopia and horror, and the promise that ""It Gets Better"" and the threat that it might not - challenge us to rethink how we read and engage with young people's media.

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Book SynopsisArgues that the themes that generate the most anxiety about adolescent culture - queer visibility, risk taking, HIV/AIDS, dystopia and horror, and the promise that ""It Gets Better"" and the threat that it might not - challenge us to rethink how we read and engage with young people's media.

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Book SynopsisIdentifies an archive of over 150 English-language children’s picture books that explicitly represent LGBTQ+ identities, expressions, and issues. This archive is then analysed to explore the evolution of LGBTQ+ characters and content from the 1970s to the present.

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Book SynopsisExplores the exemplary trove of LGBTQ+ comics that coalesced in the underground and alternative comix scenes of the mid-1960s and in the decades after. Through insightful essays and interviews with leading comics figures, contributors illuminate the critical opportunities, current interactions, and future directions of these comics.

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Book SynopsisContributions by Michelle Ann Abate, William S. Armour, Alison Bechdel, Jennifer Camper, Tesla Cariani, Matthew Cheney, Hillary Chute, Edmond (Edo) Ernest dit Alban, Ramzi Fawaz, Margaret Galvan, Justin Hall, Alison Halsall, Lara Hedberg, Susanne Hochreiter, Sheena C. Howard, Rebecca Hutton, remus jackson, Keiko Miyajima, Chinmay Murali, Marina Rauchenbacher, Katharina Serles, Sathyaraj Venkatesan, Jonathan Warren, and Lin Young The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader explores the exemplary trove of LGBTQ+ comics that coalesced in the underground and alternative comix scenes of the mid-1960s and in the decades after. Through insightful essays and interviews with leading comics figures, volume contributors illuminate the critical opportunities, current interactions, and future directions of these comics. This heavily illustrated volume engages with the work of preeminent artists across the globe, such as Howard Cruse, Edie Fake, Justin Hall, Jennifer Camper, and Ali

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Book SynopsisLooks not only at the people who participated in Mardi Gras organisations divided by race, gender, and/or sexual orientation, but also investigates the experience of ‘marked bodies’ outside of these organisations, or people involved in Carnival through their labour or as audiences (or publics) of the spectacle.

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Book SynopsisLooks not only at the people who participated in Mardi Gras organisations divided by race, gender, and/or sexual orientation, but also investigates the experience of ‘marked bodies’ outside of these organisations, or people involved in Carnival through their labour or as audiences (or publics) of the spectacle.

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Book SynopsisCollects nineteen interviews with the celebrated playwright. In these interviews, one hears Terrence McNally reflect on theatre as the most collaborative of the arts, the economic pressures that drive the theatre industry, the unique values of music and dance, and the changes in American theatre over McNally’s fifty-plus year career.

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Book SynopsisAshton, Mississippi, provides the deceptively sterile, conforming, and blindly respectable background in The Welcome, a novel written by Hubert Creekmore in 1948. Ahead of its time in the depiction of same-sex relationships, the novel caused a scandal upon release.

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Book SynopsisFrom the tenor of contemporary discussions, it would be easy to conclude that the idea of marriage between two people of the same sex is a uniquely contemporary phenomenon. Not so, argues Gary Ferguson in Same-Sex Marriage in Renaissance Rome. Making use of substantial fragments of trial transcripts Gary Ferguson brings the story of a same-sex marriage to life in striking detail. He unearths an incredible amount of detail about the men, their sex lives, and how others responded to this information, which allows him to explore attitudes toward marriage, sex, and gender at the time. Emphasizing the instability of marriage in premodern Europe, Ferguson argues that same-sex unions should be considered part of the institution''s complex and contested history.Trade ReviewFerguson's findings about a group of foreign immigrants appropriating the social and religious ritual of marriage within their own self-defined community open up a new window on homosexual activity in Renaissance Rome. The author has deftly uncovered a clandestine subculture that departed from traditional gender norms, sexual stereotypes, and marriage practices, making an important contribution to the history of marriage and sexuality. * American Historical Review *In its analysis of texts, narrative and legal, Same-Sex Marriage in Renaissance Rome is truly exemplary. * Journal of Modern History *This is a short book, but it punches above its weight. Although the book will be of most interest to historians of sexuality and other early modern historians, I would not hesitate to give it to students as an excellent model of how to read historical documents as texts while also placing them within several different relevant contexts and opening up productive ambiguities. * Journal of the History of Sexuality *[The book is a] splendid microhistorical investigation, a piece of archival detective work that challenges prevailing views about sexual identity in early modern Europe.... It is compelling reading that should make scholars, students, and activists think again about the history of sexuality. * H-Net Reviews/H-Histsex *An original and deeply thoughtful study.... Ferguson's sensitive discussion of the men's testimonies, fragmentary though they are, challenges 'some engrained historiographical notions' about same-sex erotic relationships in early modern Europe.... Ferguson's extraordinary, compassionate and poignant book allows these events to speak to us urgently about sexuality past and the present. * Gender & History *Same-Sex Marriage in Renaissance Rome will be of interest to historically inclined scholars from all disciplines, but will especially delight historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and art historians.... The case of the men at the church of Saint John at the Latin Gate demands attention, and should not be thought of as an exceptional event but as a new window into the diverse forms of historical sexuality and as a methodological example of the way to excavate these latent pasts. * H-Histsex *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Engagement PART I. STORIES—OBSERVERS 1. A French Writer Visits: Montaigne's Travel Journal and a Thrice-Told Tale 2. "Our Marriages"? Male to Male / Like Husband and Wife 3. Marriage— Rites, Analogues, Meanings 4. Other Witnesses, Other Stories PART II. STORIES—ACTORS 5. Final Hours: Wills and Execution 6. Voices on Trial: Beginning with Battista the Boatman 7. Saint John at the Latin Gate: Marco Pinto 8. Marriage as Alibi, as Euphemism, as Recruitment 9. Marriage and Community PART III. HISTORIES 10. Looking Forward / Looking Back: The History of Sexuality 11. Ghost Stories: Queer History

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