Search results for ""Author David M. Halperin""
Harvard University Press How To Be Gay
No one raises an eyebrow if you suggest that a guy who arranges his furniture just so, rolls his eyes in exaggerated disbelief, likes techno music or show tunes, and knows all of Bette Davis's best lines by heart might, just possibly, be gay. But if you assert that male homosexuality is a cultural practice, expressive of a unique subjectivity and a distinctive relation to mainstream society, people will immediately protest. Such an idea, they will say, is just a stereotype-ridiculously simplistic, politically irresponsible, and morally suspect. The world acknowledges gay male culture as a fact but denies it as a truth.David Halperin, a pioneer of LGBTQ studies, dares to suggest that gayness is a specific way of being that gay men must learn from one another in order to become who they are. Inspired by the notorious undergraduate course of the same title that Halperin taught at the University of Michigan, provoking cries of outrage from both the right-wing media and the gay press, How To Be Gay traces gay men's cultural difference to the social meaning of style.Far from being deterred by stereotypes, Halperin concludes that the genius of gay culture resides in some of its most despised features: its aestheticism, snobbery, melodrama, adoration of glamour, caricatures of women, and obsession with mothers. The insights, impertinence, and unfazed critical intelligence displayed by gay culture, Halperin argues, have much to offer the heterosexual mainstream.
£19.89
The University of Chicago Press How to Do the History of Homosexuality
David M. Halperin is one of the most eminent thinkers in the world of gay and critical studies. In this new work, he revisits and refines the argument he set forth in "One Hundred Years of Homosexuality": the idea that both hetero- and homosexuality are not biologically determined but, instead, socially constructed. "How to Do the History of Homosexuality" builds on this seminal argument, answers its critics and makes greater allowances for continuities in the history of sexuality. Above all, Halperin offers a vigorous defence of the historicist approach, one that sets a premium on the description of other societies in all their specificity and otherness instead of forcing them to fit our own conceptions of what sexuality is or ought to be. Dealing with male homosexuality and lesbianism, this volume first recovers the radical design of Michel Foucault's approach to the history of sexuality. Halperin salvages Foucault's teachings from common misapprehensions and misreadings, then makes them newly available to historians as an impetus for innovation in the field. Exploring the broader significance of historicizing desire, Halperin also questions the tendency among scholars to reduce sexuality to a mere series of classifications. Then, in a theoretical tour de force, he offers an altogether new strategy for approcaching the history of sexuality - one that rehabilitates the constructionist approach by readily acknowledging continuities across space and time. Controversial, impassioned and revelatory, "How to Do the History of Homosexuality" is a book that could only have been written by David M. Halperin. It should prove to be valuable reading for anyone interested in the history of sexuality.
£86.03
Temple University Press,U.S. Action=Vie: A History of AIDS Activism and Gay Politics in France
Act Up-Paris became one of the most notable protest groups in France in the mid-1990s. Founded in 1989, and following the New York model, it became a confrontational voice representing the interests of those affected by HIV through openly political activism. Action=Vie, the English-language translation of Christophe Broqua’s study of the grassroots activist branch, explains the reasons for the group’s success and sheds light on Act Up's defining features—such as its unique articulation between AIDS and gay activism.Featuring numerous accounts by witnesses and participants, Broqua traces the history of Act Up-Paris and shows how thousands of gay men and women confronted the AIDS epidemic by mobilizing with public actions. Act Up-Paris helped shape the social definition not only of HIV-positive persons but also of sexual minorities. Broqua analyzes the changes brought about by the group, from the emergence of new treatments for HIV infection to normalizing homosexuality and a controversy involving HIV-positive writers’ remarks about unprotected sex. This rousing history ends in the mid-2000s before marriage equality and antiretroviral treatments caused Act Up-Paris to decline.
£91.14
The University of Chicago Press Gay Shame
Ever since the 1969 Stonewall Riots, 'gay pride' has been the rallying cry of the gay rights movement and the political force behind the emergence of the field of gay and lesbian studies. But has something been lost, forgotten, or buried beneath the drive to transform homosexuality from a perversion to a proud social identity? Have the political requirements of gay pride repressed discussion of the more uncomfortable or undignified aspects of homosexuality? "Gay Shame" seeks to lift this unofficial ban on the investigation of homosexuality and shame by presenting critical work from the most vibrant frontier in contemporary queer studies.An esteemed list of contributors tackles a range of issues - questions of emotion, disreputable sexual histories, dissident gender identities, and embarrassing figures and moments in gay history - as they explore the possibility of reclaiming shame as a new, even productive, way to examine lesbian and gay culture. Accompanied by a collection of films, performance, and archival imagery on DVD, "Gay Shame" constitutes nothing less than a major redefinition and revitalization of the field.
£34.48
Princeton University Press Before Sexuality The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World
Features fifteen original essays where eminent cultural historians and classicists not only discuss sex, but demonstrate how norms, practices, and even the very definitions of what counts as sexual activity have varied significantly over time.
£54.56
Princeton University Press Rehearsals of Manhood: Athenian Drama as Social Practice
A bold reconception of ancient Greek drama by one of the most brilliant and original classical scholars of his generationWhen John Winkler died in 1990, he left an unpublished manuscript containing a highly original interpretation of the development and meaning of ancient Greek drama. Rehearsals of Manhood makes this groundbreaking work available for the first time, presenting an entirely novel picture of Greek tragedy and a vivid portrait of the cultural poetics of Athenian manhood.Ancient Athens was a military conclave as well as an urban capital, and male citizens were expected to embody the ideal of the Athenian citizen-soldier. Winkler understands Attic drama as a secular manhood ritual, a collaborative aesthetic and civic enterprise focused on the initiation of boys into manhood and the training, testing, and representation of young male warriors. Past efforts to discover the origins and development of Greek tragedy have largely treated drama as a literary genre, isolating it from other Athenian social practices. Winkler returns Greek tragedy to its social context, showing how it was one among many forms of display and performance cultivated by elite males in ancient Greece.The final work of a celebrated classical scholar, Rehearsals of Manhood highlights the civic function of the dramatic festivals at classical Athens as occasions for the examination and representation of boys on the verge of manhood, and offers a fresh explanation of how dramatic performance fit into the social life and gender politics of the Athenian state.
£31.28
