LGBTQ History Month
Welcome to our digital exhibit celebrating LGBTQ History Month. This page is a companion to the physical display in the Harvard Kennedy School Library, last available in October 2022. Harvard affiliates can request books via HOLLIS, for pick-up at the library of your choice.
In this book display, you'll find contemporary histories (and related commentaries) of LGBTQ identities, experiences, and activism, primarily focused on the United States with a few titles focused beyond. You'll also find a selection of texts that have played key roles in shaping queer theory and studies as we know the fields today.
More on LGBTQ History Month from the HKS Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging:
"LGBTQ History Month is celebrated annually throughout the month of October to observe lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history. In 1994, Its first organizers chose to celebrate LGBTQ History Month in October to coincide with National Coming Out Day (October 11) and the anniversary of the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights (October 14, 1979). Also, by observing LGBTQ History Month in October educational institutions would be able to opt into celebrating and teaching students about LGBTQ history during the academic year.
Harvard Library Research Guides
Groups & Initiatives around HKS & Harvard
- In Focus: Pride at Harvard - curated resources from across Harvard including people, scholarship, community resources, institutional history, and more.
- Gender, Race & Identity - HKS Policy Topic centered on the question of how gender, race, class and other aspects of identity affect the policymaking process.
- Queer Nation: LGBTQ Protest, Politics, and Policy in the United States - HKS course taught by Timothy Patrick McCarthy that explores "the political and politicized lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people living in the United States, focusing on the period from World War II to the present."
- LGBTQ+ Resources - curated list of LGBTQ+ events, opportunities, organizations, and support resources from the Harvard Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging.
- LGBTQ Policy Journal - HKS student journal meant to "inspire thoughtful debate, challenge commonly held beliefs, and move the conversation forward on LGBTQ rights and equality."
- LGBTQ Caucus - HKS student organization that "supports LGBTQ students through community building, professional development, and campus-wide inclusion efforts."
From the Political Buttons Collection
The Political Buttons at HKS Collection includes over 1,500 political buttons from the 20th and 21st centuries, representing U.S. political campaigns at every level, ballot initiatives, social issues and movements, and political demonstrations. Curated selections from our Political Buttons Collection are available as interactive digital exhibits, including Decades of Resistance: Political Movement Pins. Below are excerpts from the LGBTQ Rights (1970 and 1980) sections of the exhibit.
"Following the pivotal drag queen-led urban riot at Manhattan's Stonewall Inn, the 1970s marked a profound period of transformation for members of the LGBTQ community. During this decade, the LGBT movement focused on increasing their visibility: artists released some of the first significant pieces of gay and lesbian film and theater, Gay Pride Week was established, and Edward Koch became one of the first elected officials to publicly support LGBTQ people. In 1979, between 75,000 and 125,000 people attended the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, where participants advocated for equal civil rights and protective legislation. These milestones, combined with the American Psychiatric Association's removal of homosexuality from its list of psychiatric disorders, represented an enormous shift in the social acceptance of the LGBTQ community.
The 1980s marked a significant shift in the tenor and focus of the LGBT movement. The struggle for visibility and civil equality necessarily turned into a fight for an entire community's lives as the AIDS epidemic began. While the HIV strand of AIDS has affected public health globally since 1920, it first spread to the Western Hemisphere in the 1970s and made its way to the U.S. in the early 1980s. Because the first cases of HIV/AIDS were found in gay men, the virus was initially (though misleadingly) termed 'gay-related immune deficiency (GRID)'.
Galvanized by the Reagan Administration's inadequate response to the virus -- half of the reported cases of which affected the LGBT community -- activists soon formed the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). This national group led public demonstrations, civil disobedience, and information campaigns to address the AIDS crisis. Gay pride parades continued during this period, though they took on a more somber tone relative to the lively, radical marches of the 1970s."
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Contemporary Histories & Commentary
Click on the circular "i" icons to view book descriptions. Click on the Harvard shield icons to access ebooks (Harvard Key required).
Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage by
While what feels like the entirety of the gay and lesbian movement is marching in unison towards some vague notion of equality, the Against Equality collective has been quietly assembling a digital archive to document the critical resistance to the politics of inclusion. This pocket-sized book of archival texts lays out some of the historical foundations of queer resistance to the gay marriage mainstream alongside more contemporary inter-subjective critiques that deal directly with issues of race, class, gender, citizenship, age, ability, and more. In portable book form, the critical conversations that are happening so readily on the internet will no longer be withheld from those with little to no online access like queer and trans prisoners, people of low income, rural folks and the technologically challenged.
ISBN: 9780615392684Publication Date: 2010
Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology by
A groundbreaking collection of sixteen essays that examines the productive intersection of the fields of black and queer studies.
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ISBN: 9780822387220Publication Date: 2005
Critically Sovereign: Indigenous Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies by
Critically Sovereign traces the ways in which gender is inextricably a part of Indigenous politics and U.S. and Canadian imperialism and colonialism. The contributors show how gender, sexuality, and feminism work as co-productive forces of Native American and Indigenous sovereignty, self-determination, and epistemology. Several essays use a range of literary and legal texts to analyze the production of colonial space, the biopolitics of "Indianness," and the collisions and collusions between queer theory and colonialism within Indigenous studies. Others address the U.S. government's criminalization of traditional forms of Diné marriage and sexuality, the Iñupiat people's changing conceptions of masculinity as they embrace the processes of globalization, Hawai'i's same-sex marriage bill, and stories of Indigenous women falling in love with non-human beings such as animals, plants, and stars. Following the politics of gender, sexuality, and feminism across these diverse historical and cultural contexts, the contributors question and reframe the thinking about Indigenous knowledge, nationhood, citizenship, history, identity, belonging, and the possibilities for a decolonial future.
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ISBN: 9780822373162Publication Date: 2017
The Deviant's War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America by
In 1957, Frank Kameny, an astronomer working for the US Defense Department in Hawaii, received a summons to report immediately to Washington, D.C. The Pentagon had reason to believe he was a homosexual, and after a series of humiliating interviews, Kameny--like countless gay men and women for before him--was promptly dismissed from his government job. Unlike many others, though, he fought back.Eric Cervini tells the story of what followed in this pathbreaking history of an early champion of gay liberation. Based on firsthand accounts, recently declassified FBI records, and forty thousand personal documents, The Deviant's War, the first book of LGBTQ+ history to hit the New York Times best seller list in over 25 years, is a story of America (and Washington) at a cultural and sexual crossroads, of shocking, byzantine public battles with Congress, of FBI informants, murder, betrayal, sex, love--and ultimately victory.
ISBN: 9781250798503Publication Date: 2021
Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive by
While many feminist and queer movements are designed to challenge sexism, they often simultaneously police gender and sexuality,sometimes just as fiercely as the straight, male-centric mainstream does. Among LGBTQ activists, there is a long history of lesbians and gay men dismissing bisexuals, transgender people, and other gender and sexual minorities. In each case, exclusion is based on the premise that certain ways of being gendered or sexual are more legitimate, natural, or righteous than others.As a trans woman, bisexual, and femme activist, Julia Serano has spent much of the last ten years challenging various forms of exclusion within feminist and queer/LGBTQ movements. In Excluded, she chronicles many of these instances of exclusion and argues that marginalizing others often stems from a handful of assumptions that are routinely made about gender and sexuality. These false assumptions infect theories, activism, organizations, and communities,and worse, they enable people to vigorously protest certain forms of sexism while simultaneously ignoring and even perpetuating others. Serano advocates for a new approach to fighting sexism that avoids these pitfalls and offers new ways of thinking about gender, sexuality, and sexism that foster inclusivity rather than exclusivity.
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ISBN: 9781580055048Publication Date: 2013
Gay Bar: Why We Went Out by
As gay bars continue to close at an alarming rate, a writer looks back to find out what's being lost in this indispensable, intimate, and stylish celebration of queer history. Strobing lights and dark rooms; throbbing house and drag queens on counters; first kisses, last call: the gay bar has long been a place of solidarity and sexual expression--whatever your scene, whoever you're seeking. But in urban centers around the world, they are closing, a cultural demolition that has Jeremy Atherton Lin wondering: What was the gay bar? How have they shaped him? And could this spell the end of gay identity as we know it? In Gay Bar, the author embarks upon a transatlantic tour of the hangouts that marked his life, with each club, pub, and dive revealing itself to be a palimpsest of queer history. In prose as exuberant as a hit of poppers and dazzling as a disco ball, he time-travels from Hollywood nights in the 1970s to a warren of cruising tunnels built beneath London in the 1770s; from chichi bars in the aftermath of AIDS to today's fluid queer spaces; through glory holes, into Crisco-slicked dungeons and down San Francisco alleys. He charts police raids and riots, posing and passing out--and a chance encounter one restless night that would change his life forever. The journey that emerges is a stylish and nuanced inquiry into the connection between place and identity--a tale of liberation, but one that invites us to go beyond the simplified Stonewall mythology and enter lesser-known battlefields in the struggle to carve out a territory. Elegiac, randy, and sparkling with wry wit, Gay Bar is at once a serious critical inquiry, a love story and an epic night out to remember.
ISBN: 9780316458733Publication Date: 2021
The Gay Revolution: The Story of Struggle by
The fight for gay, lesbian and trans civil rights is the most important civil rights issue of the present day. Based on rigorous research and more than 150 interviews, The Gay Revolution tells this unfinished story not through dry facts but through dramatic accounts of passionate struggles, with all the sweep, depth and intricacies only an award-winning activist, scholar and novelist like Lillian Faderman can evoke. A defining account, this is the most complete and authoritative book of its kind.
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ISBN: 9781451694116Publication Date: 2015
Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category by
Imagining Transgender is an ethnography of the emergence and institutionalization of transgender as a category of collective identity and political activism. Embraced by activists in the early 1990s to advocate for gender-variant people, the category quickly gained momentum in public health, social service, scholarly, and legislative contexts. Working as a safer-sex activist in Manhattan during the late 1990s, David Valentine conducted ethnographic research among mostly male-to-female transgender-identified people at drag balls, support groups, cross-dresser organizations, clinics, bars, and clubs. However, he found that many of those labeled "transgender" by activists did not know the term or resisted its use. Instead, they self-identified as "gay," a category of sexual rather than gendered identity and one rejected in turn by the activists who claimed these subjects as transgender. Valentine analyzes the reasons for and potential consequences of this difference, and how social theory is implicated in it. Valentine argues that "transgender" has been adopted so rapidly in the contemporary United States because it clarifies a model of gender and sexuality that has been gaining traction within feminism, psychiatry, and mainstream gay and lesbian politics since the 1970s: a paradigm in which gender and sexuality are distinct arenas of human experience. This distinction and the identity categories based on it erase the experiences of some gender-variant people--particularly poor persons of color--who conceive of gender and sexuality in other terms. While recognizing the important advances transgender has facilitated, Valentine argues that a broad vision of social justice must include, simultaneously, an attentiveness to the politics of language and a recognition of how social theoretical models and broader political economies are embedded in the day-to-day politics of identity.
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ISBN: 9780822338536Publication Date: 2007
Making Gay History: The Half-Century Fight for Lesbian and Gay Equal Rights by
A completely revised and updated edition of the classic volume of oral history interviews with high-profile leaders and little-known participants in the gay rights movement that cumulatively provides a powerful documentary look at the struggle for gay rights in America. From the Boy Scouts and the U.S. military to marriage and adoption, the gay civil rights movement has exploded on the national stage. Eric Marcus takes us back in time to the earliest days of that struggle in a newly revised and thoroughly updated edition of Making History, originally published in 1992. Using the heartfelt stories of more than sixty people, he carries us through a compelling five-decade battle that has changed the fabric of American society. The rich tapestry that emerges from Making Gay History includes the inspiring voices of teenagers and grandparents, journalists and housewives, from the little-known Dr. Evelyn Hooker and Morty Manford to former vice president Al Gore, Ellen DeGeneres, and Abigail Van Buren. Together, these many stories bear witness to a time of astonishing change, as queer people have struggled against prejudice and fought for equal rights under the law.
ISBN: 9780060933913Publication Date: 2002
One Hundred Years of Homosexuality: And Other Essays on Greek Love by
Examining love, sex and gender in the ancient Greek world, David Halperin documents the existence in ancient Greece of a radically unfamiliar set of attitudes and behaviours, institutions and social practices.
ISBN: 9780415900966Publication Date: 1989
Out in Time: The Public Lives of Gay Men from Stonewall to the Queer Generation by
The civil rights of LGBTQ people have slowly yet steadily strengthened since the Stonewall Riots of June, 1969. Despite enormous opposition from some political segments and the catastrophic effects of the AIDS crisis, the last five decades have witnessed improvement in the conditions of thelives of LGBTQ individuals in the United States. As such, the realities and challenges faced by a young gay man coming of age and coming out in the 1960s is, in many profound ways, different from the experiences of a young gay man coming of age and coming out today.Out in Time explores the life experiences of three generations of gay men --the Stonewall, AIDS, and Queer generations - arguing that while there are generational differences in the lived experiences of young gay men, each one confronts its own unique historical events, realities, andsocio-political conditions, there are consistencies across time that define and unify the identity formation of gay men. Guided by the vast research literature on gay identity formation and coming out, the ideas and themes explored here are seen through the oral histories of a diverse set of fifteengay men, five from each generation.Out in Time demonstrates how early life challenges define and shape the life courses of gay men, demarcating both the specific time-bound challenges encountered by each generation, and the universal challenges encountered by gay men coming of age across allgenerations and the conditions that define their lives.
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ISBN: 9780190686604Publication Date: 2019
Queer (in)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States by
Drawing on years of research, activism, and legal advocacy, Queer (In)Justice is a searing examination of queer experiences--as "suspects," defendants, prisoners, and survivors of crime. The authors unpack queer criminal archetypes--like "gleeful gay killers," "lethal lesbians," "disease spreaders," and "deceptive gender benders"--to illustrate the punishment of queer expression, regardless of whether a crime was ever committed. Tracing stories from the streets to the bench to behind prison bars, the authors prove that the policing of sex and gender both bolsters and reinforces racial and gender inequalities. A groundbreaking work that turns a "queer eye" on the criminal legal system, Queer (In)Justice illuminates and challenges the many ways in which queer lives are criminalized, policed, and punished.
ISBN: 9780807051160Publication Date: 2011
Queer: A Graphic History by
Activist-academic Meg-John Barker and cartoonist Jules Scheele illuminate the histories of queer thought and LGBTQ+ action in this groundbreaking non-fiction graphic novel. From identity politics and gender roles to privilege and exclusion, Queer explores how we came to view sex, gender and sexuality in the ways that we do; how these ideas get tangled up with our culture and our understanding of biology, psychology and sexology; and how these views have been disputed and challenged. Presented in a brilliantly engaging and witty style, this is a unique portrait of the universe of queer thinking.
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ISBN: 9781785780714Publication Date: 2016
Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture by
Queering the Color Line transforms previous understandings of how homosexuality was "invented" as a category of identity in the United States beginning in the late nineteenth century. Analyzing a range of sources, including sexology texts, early cinema, and African American literature, Siobhan B. Somerville argues that the emerging understanding of homosexuality depended on the context of the black/white "color line," the dominant system of racial distinction during this period. This book thus critiques and revises tendencies to treat race and sexuality as unrelated categories of analysis, showing instead that race has historically been central to the cultural production of homosexuality. At about the same time that the 1896 Supreme Court Plessy v. Ferguson decision hardened the racialized boundary between black and white, prominent trials were drawing the public's attention to emerging categories of sexual identity. Somerville argues that these concurrent developments were not merely parallel but in fact inextricably interrelated and that the discourses of racial and sexual "deviance" were used to reinforce each other's terms. She provides original readings of such texts as Havelock Ellis's late nineteenth-century work on "sexual inversion," the 1914 film A Florida Enchantment, the novels of Pauline E. Hopkins, James Weldon Johnson's Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, and Jean Toomer's fiction and autobiographical writings, including Cane. Through her analyses of these texts and her archival research, Somerville contributes to the growing body of scholarship that focuses on discovering the intersections of gender, race, and sexuality. Queering the Color Line will have broad appeal across disciplines including African American studies, gay and lesbian studies, literary criticism, cultural studies, cinema studies, and gender studies.
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ISBN: 9780822324072Publication Date: 2000
Queer Korea by
Since the end of the nineteenth century, the Korean people have faced successive waves of foreign domination, authoritarian regimes, forced dispersal, and divided development. Throughout these turbulent times, "queer" Koreans were ignored, minimized, and erased in narratives of their modern nation, East Asia, and the wider world. This interdisciplinary volume challenges such marginalization through critical analyses of non-normative sexuality and gender variance. Considering both personal and collective forces, the contributors extend individualized notions of queer neoliberalism beyond those typically set in Western queer theory. Along the way, they recount a range of illuminating topics, from shamanic rituals during the colonial era and B-grade comedy films under Cold War dictatorship to female masculinity among today's youth and transgender confrontations with the resident registration system. More broadly, Queer Korea offers readers new ways of understanding the limits and possibilities of human liberation under exclusionary conditions of modernity in Asia and beyond.
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ISBN: 9781478003366Publication Date: 2020
The Routledge Handbook of LGBTQIA Administration and Policy by
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, and Allies community (abbreviated LGBTQIA or "LGBT") is responding to a radically changed social and political environment. While a host of books have analyzed legal dimensions of LGBT public policy, this authoritative Routledge handbook is the first to utilize up-to-the-minute empirical data to examine and unpick the corrosive "post-factual" changes undermining LGBT public policy development. Taking an innovative look at a wide range of social and policy issues of broad interest--including homelessness, transgender rights, healthcare, immigration, substance abuse, caring for senior members of the community, sexual education, resilience, and international policy--through contributions from established scholars and rising stars, this comprehensive and cutting-edge volume will be a landmark reference work on LGBT administration and policy for decades to come.
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ISBN: 9780815366508Publication Date: 2018
The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America by
The Straight State is the most expansive study of the federal regulation of homosexuality yet written. Unearthing startling new evidence from the National Archives, Margot Canaday shows how the state systematically came to penalize homosexuality, giving rise to a regime of second-class citizenship that sexual minorities still live under today. Canaday looks at three key arenas of government control--immigration, the military, and welfare--and demonstrates how federal enforcement of sexual norms emerged with the rise of the modern bureaucratic state. She begins at the turn of the twentieth century when the state first stumbled upon evidence of sex and gender nonconformity, revealing how homosexuality was policed indirectly through the exclusion of sexually "degenerate" immigrants and other regulatory measures aimed at combating poverty, violence, and vice. Canaday argues that the state's gradual awareness of homosexuality intensified during the later New Deal and through the postwar period as policies were enacted that explicitly used homosexuality to define who could enter the country, serve in the military, and collect state benefits. Midcentury repression was not a sudden response to newly visible gay subcultures, Canaday demonstrates, but the culmination of a much longer and slower process of state-building during which the state came to know and to care about homosexuality across many decades. Social, political, and legal history at their most compelling, The Straight State explores how regulation transformed the regulated: in drawing boundaries around national citizenship, the state helped to define the very meaning of homosexuality in America.
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ISBN: 9781400830428Publication Date: 2009
Key Works in Queer Theory
Click on the circular "i" icons to view book descriptions. Click on the Harvard shield icons to access ebooks (Harvard Key required).
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by
By the time Rock Hudson's death in 1985 alerted all America to the danger of the AIDS epidemic, the disease had spread across the nation, killing thousands of people and emerging as the greatest health crisis of the 20th century. America faced a troubling question: What happened? How was this epidemic allowed to spread so far before it was taken seriously? In answering these questions, Shilts weaves weaves the disparate threads into a coherent story, pinning down every evasion and contradiction at the highest levels of the medical, political, and media establishments. Shilts shows that the epidemic spread wildly because the federal government put budget ahead of the nation's welfare; health authorities placed political expediency before the public health; and scientists were often more concerned with international prestige than saving lives. Against this backdrop, Shilts tells the heroic stories of individuals in science and politics, public health and the gay community, who struggled to alert the nation to the enormity of the danger it faced. "And the Band Played On "is both a tribute to these heroic people and a stinging indictment of the institutions that failed the nation so badly.
ISBN: 0312241356Publication Date: 2000
Epistemology of the Closet by
Since the late 1980s, queer studies and theory have become vital to the intellectual and political life of the United States. This has been due, in no small degree, to the influence of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's critically acclaimed Epistemology of the Closet. Working from classic texts of European and American writers-including Melville, James, Nietzsche, Proust, and Wilde-Sedgwick analyzes a turn-of-the-century historical moment in which sexual orientation became as important a demarcation of personhood as gender had been for centuries. In her preface to this updated edition Sedgwick places the book both personally and historically, looking specifically at the horror of the first wave of the AIDS epidemic and its influence on the text.
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ISBN: 9780520254060Publication Date: 2008
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity by
Since its publication in 1990, Gender Trouble has become one of the key works of contemporary feminist theory, and an essential work for anyone interested in the study of gender, queer theory, or the politics of sexuality in culture. Arguing that traditional feminism is wrong to look to a natural, 'essential' notion of the female, or indeed of sex or gender, Butler starts by questioning the category 'woman' and continues in this vein with examinations of 'the masculine' and 'the feminine'. Best known however, but also most often misinterpreted, is Butler's concept of gender as a reiterated social performance rather than the expression of a prior reality.
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ISBN: 9780415924993Publication Date: 1999
The History of Sexuality: An Introduction by
Why we are so fascinated with sex and sexuality--from the preeminent philosopher of the 20th century. Michel Foucault offers an iconoclastic exploration of why we feel compelled to continually analyze and discuss sex, and of the social and mental mechanisms of power that cause us to direct the questions of what we are to what our sexuality is.
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ISBN: 9780394417752Publication Date: 1978How to Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicles of AIDS by Paula A. Treichler has become a singularly important voice among the significant theorists on the AIDS crisis. Dissecting the cultural politics surrounding representations of HIV and AIDS, her work has altered the field of cultural studies by establishing medicine as a legitimate focus for cultural analysis. How to Have Theory in an Epidemic is a comprehensive collection of Treichler's related writings, including revised and updated essays from the 1980s and 1990s that present a sustained argument about the AIDS epidemic from a uniquely knowledgeable and interdisciplinary standpoint. "AIDS is more than an epidemic disease," Treichler writes, "it is an epidemic of meanings." Exploring how such meanings originate, proliferate, and take hold, her essays investigate how certain interpretations of the epidemic dominate while others are obscured. They also suggest ways to understand and choose between overlapping or competing discourses. In her coverage of roughly fifteen years of the AIDS epidemic, Treichler addresses a range of key issues, from biomedical discourse and theories of pathogenesis to the mainstream media's depictions of the crisis in both developed and developing countries. She also examines representations of women and AIDS, treatment issues, and the role of activism in shaping the politics of the epidemic. Linking the AIDS tragedy to a uniquely broad spectrum of contemporary theory and culture, this collection concludes with an essay on the continued importance of theoretical thought for untangling the sociocultural phenomena of AIDS--and for tackling the disease itself. With an exhaustive bibliography of critical and theoretical writings on HIV and AIDS, this long-awaited volume will be essential to all those invested in studying the course of AIDS, its devastating medical effects, and its massive impact on contemporary culture. It should become a standard text in university courses dealing with AIDS in biomedicine, sociology, anthropology, gay and lesbian studies, women's studies, and cultural and media studies.
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ISBN: 9780822322863Publication Date: 1999
The Invention of Heterosexuality by
This thought-provoking book focuses on the evolution of heterosexuality from opprobrium to the gold standard of sexuality. It is a challenging and controversial demonstration of how our conceptions of human sexuality derive not from immutable definitions of nature, but from evolving historical perspective.
ISBN: 9780525938453Publication Date: 1995
Making Trouble: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and the University by
Why has the gay freedome struggle continued to thrive despite the conservative political climate of recent years? What happens when gay and lesbian educators come out of the closet? Combining historical and political analysis with autobiography and memoir. This book brings together the essays of John D'Emilio, a pioneering gay historian and long-time movement activist. Writeen over a period of almost twenty years, these essays provide a unique exploration of the history of gay life since World War II, describe the courage and accomplishments of gay and lesbian activities, and survey the vast changes that their movement for equality has had on American society, politics, and the university.
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ISBN: 9781136641848Publication Date: 2014
Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law by
Wait--what's wrong with rights? It is usually assumed that trans and gender nonconforming people should follow the civil rights and "equality" strategies of lesbian and gay rights organizations by agitating for legal reforms that would ostensibly guarantee nondiscrimination and equal protection under the law. This approach assumes that the best way to address the poverty and criminalization that plague trans populations is to gain legal recognition and inclusion in the state's institutions. But is this strategy effective? In Normal Life Dean Spade presents revelatory critiques of the legal equality framework for social change, and points to examples of transformative grassroots trans activism that is raising demands that go beyond traditional civil rights reforms. Spade explodes assumptions about what legal rights can do for marginalized populations, and describes transformative resistance processes and formations that address the root causes of harm and violence. In the new afterword to this revised and expanded edition, Spade notes the rapid mainstreaming of trans politics and finds that his predictions that gaining legal recognition will fail to benefit trans populations are coming to fruition. Spade examines recent efforts by the Obama administration and trans equality advocates to "pinkwash" state violence by articulating the US military and prison systems as sites for trans inclusion reforms. In the context of recent increased mainstream visibility of trans people and trans politics, Spade continues to advocate for the dismantling of systems of state violence that shorten the lives of trans people. Now more than ever, Normal Life is an urgent call for justice and trans liberation, and the radical transformations it will require.
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ISBN: 9780822359890Publication Date: 2015
The Routledge Queer Studies Reader by
The Routledge Queer Studies Reader provides a comprehensive resource for students and scholars working in this vibrant and interdisciplinary field. The book traces the emergence and development of Queer Studies as a field of scholarship, presenting key critical essays alongside more recent criticism that explores new directions. The collection is edited by leading scholars in the field and presents: individual introductory notes that situate each work within its historical, disciplinary and theoretical contexts essays grouped by key subject areas including Genealogies, Sex, Temporalities, Kinship, Affect, Bodies, and Borders writings by major figures including Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, David M. Halperin, José Esteban Muñoz, Elizabeth Grosz, David Eng, Judith Halberstam and Sara Ahmed. The Routledge Queer Studies Reader is a field-defining volume and presents an illuminating guide for established scholars and also those new to Queer Studies.
ISBN: 9780415564106Publication Date: 2012
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by
In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope.
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ISBN: 9781580911863Publication Date: 2007
Stone Butch Blues by
Jess Goldberg decides to come out as a butch in the bars and factories of the prefeminist '60s and then to pass as a man in order to survive when she is left without work or a community in the early '70s.
ISBN: 9781563410307Publication Date: 1993
Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times by
Ten years on, Jasbir K. Puar's pathbreaking Terrorist Assemblages remains one of the most influential queer theory texts and continues to reverberate across multiple political landscapes, activist projects, and scholarly pursuits. Puar argues that configurations of sexuality, race, gender, nation, class, and ethnicity are realigning in relation to contemporary forces of securitization, counterterrorism, and nationalism. She examines how liberal politics incorporate certain queer subjects into the fold of the nation-state, shifting queers from their construction as figures of death to subjects tied to ideas of life and productivity. This tenuous inclusion of some queer subjects depends, however, on the production of populations of Orientalized terrorist bodies. Heteronormative ideologies that the U.S. nation-state has long relied on are now accompanied by what Puar calls homonationalism--a fusing of homosexuality to U.S. pro-war, pro-imperialist agendas. As a concept and tool of biopolitical management, homonationalism is here to stay. Puar's incisive analyses of feminist and queer responses to the Abu Ghraib photographs, the decriminalization of sodomy in the wake of the Patriot Act, and the profiling of Sikh Americans and South Asian diasporic queers are not instances of a particular historical moment; rather, they are reflective of the dynamics saturating power, sexuality, race, and politics today.
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ISBN: 9780822371113Publication Date: 2017
This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by
Originally released in 1981, This Bridge Called My Back is a testimony to women of color feminism as it emerged in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Through personal essays, criticism, interviews, testimonials, poetry, and visual art, the collection explores, as coeditor Cherríe Moraga writes, 'the complex confluence of identities—race, class, gender, and sexuality—systemic to women of color oppression and liberation.'
ISBN: 9780913175033Publication Date: 1983
Transgender History by
Covering American transgender history from the mid-twentieth century to today, Transgender History takes a chronological approach to the subject of transgender history, with each chapter covering major movements, writings, and events. Chapters cover the transsexual and transvestite communities in the years following World War II; trans radicalism and social change, which spanned from 1966 with the publication of The Transsexual Phenomenon, and lasted through the early 1970s; the mid-'70s to 1990-the era of identity politics and the changes witnessed in trans circles through these years; and the gender issues witnessed through the '90s and '00s. Transgender History includes informative sidebars highlighting quotes from major texts and speeches in transgender history and brief biographies of key players, plus excerpts from transgender memoirs and discussion of treatments of transgenderism in popular culture.
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ISBN: 9781580052245Publication Date: 2008
Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by
A provocative manifesto, Whipping Girl tells the powerful story of Julia Serano, a transsexual woman whose supremely intelligent writing reflects her diverse background as a lesbian transgender activist and professional biologist. Serano shares her experiences and observations-both pre- and post-transition-to reveal the ways in which fear, suspicion, and dismissiveness toward femininity shape our societal attitudes toward trans women, as well as gender and sexuality as a whole.Serano's well-honed arguments stem from her ability to bridge the gap between the often-disparate biological and social perspectives on gender. She exposes how deep-rooted the cultural belief is that femininity is frivolous, weak, and passive, and how this 'feminine' weakness exists only to attract and appease male desire.In addition to debunking popular misconceptions about transsexuality, Serano makes the case that today's feminists and transgender activist must work to embrace and empower femininity-in all of its wondrous forms.
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ISBN: 9781580051545Publication Date: 2007
