Search results for ""Author Mary L. Gray""

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Book SynopsisFrom Wal-Mart drag parties to renegade Homemaker's Clubs, this book offers a contemporary account of the lives of rural queer youth. It maps out the experiences of young people living in small towns across rural Kentucky and along its desolate Appalachian borders.Trade ReviewOut in the Country succeeds insofar as it turns our attention toward the unique set of challenges faced by queer rural youth as they try to reconcile where they live with who they love. * Daily Yonder *Out in the Country gives hope that times are changing, highlighting the lives of todays rural queer youth through a series of case studies focusing on the efforts of advocates to increase gay visibility. Informative and insightfulyoull be surprised by what you find! * MIX Word *Gray . . . challenges the urban focus of queer politics and media studies, and not solely in her choice of topic. This book has more ambitious aims than simply documenting a neglected population. Her focus on rural queer youth does this admirably, but even more impressive is how she uses her topic to unpack what Jack Halberstam calls the 'metronormativity' of queer scholarship and its implications for politics of visibility -- D. Travers Scott * International Journal of Communication *Out in the Country promises to excite and ignite our critical imaginations as it pushes us to reckon with the complexity of queer lives away from the urban spotlight. Gray has done a stupendous job in bringing these stories to light, and in analyzing them with such warmth, humor, and insight. -- Suzanna Danuta Walters,author of All the RageGrays ethnography allows us an in-depth look at GLBT young people in the southeastern United States. Grays book should be read by anyone who works with rural GLBT youth, and those interested in learning about an under-represented, but not invisible, population. * PopMatters.com *In this deft, smart ethnography, Gray not only brings to life the intricacies of rural queer existence, but also dislodges conventional assumptions about gay media visibility, queer identities, and the closet. As friendly, articulate, and challenging as its subjects, Out in the Country is a major contribution to both sexuality and media scholarship. -- Joshua Gamson,author of The Fabulous SylvesterWe still know far too little about the experiences of queer youth, especially those who live in small towns and farming communities. Grays pioneering work will do much to cure our ignorance, as she takes us along on an engaging exploration of queer teenagers caught in the crosswinds of commercial media culture and local societal and political beliefs. -- Larry Gross,author of Up From Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in AmericaYoung queer people living in rural areas face numerous challenges, to be sure. But they creatively use new media and other strategies to find one another, as Gray shows so well. Out in the Countrychallenges preconceptions about both gender and sexual nonconformity in rural America. -- Arlene Stein,author of The Stranger Next DoorTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Preface: Never Met a Stranger 1 Introduction: There Are No Queers Here Part I: Queers Here? Recognizing the Familiar Stranger 2 Unexpected Activists: Homemakers Club and Gay Teens at the Local Library 3 School Fight! Local Struggles over National Advocacy Strategies 4 From Wal-Mart to Websites: Out in Public Part II: Queering Realness 5 Online Profiles: Remediating the Coming-Out Story 6 To Be Real: Transidentification on the Discovery Channel 7 Conclusion: Visibility Out in the Country Epilogue: You Got to Fight for Your Right ... to Marry? Appendix: Methods, Ad-hoc Ethics, and the Politics of Sexuality Studies Notes Bibliography Index About the Author

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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 SynopsisChoice Outstanding Academic Title of 2016Rural queer experience is often hidden or ignored, and presumed to be alienating, lacking, and incomplete without connections to a gay culture that exists in an urban elsewhere. Queering the Countryside offers the first comprehensive look at queer desires found in rural America from a genuinely multi-disciplinary perspective. This collection of original essays confronts the assumption that queer desires depend upon urban life for meaning.By considering rural queer life, the contributors challenge readers to explore queer experiences in ways that give greater context and texture to modern practices of identity formation. The book's focus on understudied rural spaces throws into relief the overemphasis of urban locations and structures in the current political and theoretical work on queer sexualities and genders. Queering the Countryside highlights the need to rethink notions of the closet and coming out and the charactTrade 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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