Search results for ""Author Jonathan Alexander""

An archive of personal trauma that addresses how a culture still toxic to queer people can reshape a body In the summer of 2019, Jonathan Alexander had a minor stroke, what his doctors called an “eye stroke.” A small bit of cholesterol came loose from a vein in his neck and instead of shooting into his brain and causing damage, it lodged itself in a branch artery of his retina, resulting in a permanent blindspot in his right eye. In Stroke Book, Alexander recounts both the immediate aftermath of his health crisis, which marked deeper health concerns, as well as his experiences as a queer person subject to medical intervention. A pressure that the queer ill contend with is feeling at fault for their condition, of having somehow chosen illness as punishment for their queerness, however subconsciously. Queer people often experience psychic and somatic pressures that not only decrease their overall quality of life but can also lead to shorter lifespans. Emerging out of a medical emergency and a need to think and feel that crisis through the author’s sexuality, changing sense of dis/ability, and experience of time, Stroke Book invites readers on a personal journey of facing a health crisis while trying to understand how one’s sexual identity affects and is affected by that crisis. Pieceing and stitching together his experience in a queered diary form, Alexander’s lyrical prose documents his ongoing, unfolding experience in the aftermath of the stroke. Through the fracturing of his text, which almost mirrors his fractured sight post-stroke, the author grapples with his shifted experience of time, weaving in and out, while he tracks the aftermath of what he comes to call his “incident” and meditates on how a history of homophobic encounters can manifest in embodied forms. The book situates itself within a larger queer tradition of writing—first, about the body, then about the body unbecoming, and then, yet further, about the body ongoing, even in the shadow of death. Stroke Book also documents the complexities of critique and imagination while holding open a space for dreaming, pleasure, intimacy, and the unexpected.

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The author is Professor at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, and a noted authority on Italian medieval and Renaissance manuscript illumination. His numerous publications include Medieval Illuminators and Their Methods of Work, and he recently organized the exhibition The Painted Page: Italian Renaissance Book Illumination 1450-1550 at the Royal Academy of London. The present volume presents a comprehensive selection of Professor Alexander's papers on Italian manuscript illumination, from the medieval period through the Renaissance. These feature some of the most celebrated works of one of the great ages of book production. A paper on marginal illustrations in Italian manuscripts is published here for the first time, and the older studies have been extensively revised and updated. There is a comprehensive index, and a new introduction by the author.

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The author is Professor at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, and a noted authority on Italian medieval and Renaissance manuscript illumination. His numerous publications include Medieval Illuminators and Their Methods of Work, and he recently organized the exhibition The Painted Page: Italian Renaissance Book Illumination 1450-1550 at the Royal Academy of London. The present volume presents a comprehensive selection of Professor Alexander's papers on Italian manuscript illumination, from the medieval period through the Renaissance. These feature some of the most celebrated works of one of the great ages of book production. A paper on marginal illustrations in Italian manuscripts is published here for the first time, and the older studies have been extensively revised and updated. There is a comprehensive index, and a new introduction by the author.

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According to David Halperin, sexuality in our time is typified by a "crisis in contemporary sexual definition". What is sexuality? What does it mean to have a sexual identity or orientation? What is the relationship between sexuality as a knowledge construct, on one hand, and the often messy flows of desire and practices of love, on the other? How and why are some sexual, erotic, and intimate practices normalized and others marginalized? Queer Theory has emerged in the West as one of the most provocative analytical tools in the humanities and social sciences. It scrutinizes identity and social structures that take heteronormativity for granted – that do not question the social construction of heterosexuality as normative in relation to its oppositional binary, homosexuality. At the same time, bisexuality is a practice, identity, and orientation that challenges the binary logic around which cultural notions of sexuality are organized. It is a portal to the imagination of a world of amorous expression beyond that divide.This provocative collection presents bisexuality and queer theory as two parallel thought collectives that have made significant contributions to cultural discourses about sexual and amorous practices since the onset of the AIDS era, and explores the ideas that circulate in these thought collectives today. We learn much about the construction and experience of sexuality, and the power it still holds throughout the contemporary Western world to shape identities and practices. This volume challenges our understanding of what it means to be sexual, to have a sexual identity, and to practise the arts of loving.This book was orginally published as a special issue of the Journal of Bisexuality.

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