Queer Theory is one of the most contested and intellectually complex movements in contemporary sexual politics. Where did it come from, and what does it do? Is queer theory only for queers? If you have ever wanted to be a leather daddy, been puzzled by performativity, tried to measure bisexuality, or wondered whether Diana, Princess of Wales could be a gay icon, Queer Theory is required reading.This vibrant anthology of groundbreaking work by influential scholars, activists, performers, and visual artists is essential for anyone with an interest in sexuality studies or gender activism. The fifteen articles - including two specially commissioned contributions, as well as an engaging introduction - map, contextualise, and challenge queer theory's project both within and beyond the academy. Helpful critical summaries that link the selections, and suggestions for further reading, make this volume perfect for anyone approaching queer theory for the first time.

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Queer Theory and Social Change argues that there is a crisis within Queer theory over whether or not its theories can actually deliver change.Max Kirsch presents a challenging alternative to the current fascination with post-modern analyses of identity, culture, and difference. It emphasizes the need for a discussion of the importance of communities and the role of globalization on queer movements.

Product Description: Who are queers and what do they want? Could it be that we are all queers? Beginning with such questions, William B. Turner's lucid and engaging book traces the roots of queer theory to the growing awareness that few of us precisely fit standard categories for sexual and gender identity...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

"Lesbians are adept at constructing survival strategies. Our being in this world exacts a cost, and our identities mutate to incorporate and resist that cost. The reality of our world is our relentless demand for presence, an occupation of space which we have colonized for ourselves, in the name of a configuration of desires we call 'lesbian', -- the more reflective we can become about these tactics, the more powerful is our rhetoric of existence".This book is concerned with the ways contemporary lesbians have taken up imaginative and material space. It describes the mechanics of presence, how modern lesbians have produced a discursive space which offers a refutation to the closet. Identities are produced, expressed, and authenticated by and through space. Understanding "real" and metaphorical spatial structures helps us to discover new sites of presence and resistance. Some famous spaces, such as New York, Paris, and Berlin, have been constitutive of modern gay and lesbian identities. Social spaces teach us something about the relations of domination and subordination around us, and we have seen recently in that struggle "to be", a growing politics of location and locatedness.Space is also taken imaginatively. Our narratives, which have become moral and political handbooks, provide role models for building and consolidating identities and communities. By processes of interpretation, drawing from literary and cultural theory, the author displays ways in which lesbian identities are ascribed, resisted and embraced. The structure of the book is provided by the choice of models the author sees as organizing and mobilizing contemporary lesbian desire: the hero, the flaneur, thelesbian outlaw, the butch body and the lesbian nation. The lesbian flaneur and the lesbian hero are emotive figures of movement; both explore possibilities for lesbian identity and subjectivity. Both are adaptations of mainstream representations which have been manipulated for a lesbian political agenda, by contemporary North American writers, whose works the author explores in depth. The imagination, and experience, constitute dialectically the lesbian subject, and literature, the author demonstrates, is a principal forum for the exploration and testing of lesbian subjectivity, operating on an unconscious and emotional level.

The political and academic appropriation of the term queer over the last several years has marked a shift in the study of sexuality from a focus on supposedly essential categories as gay and lesbian to more fluid or queer notions of sexual identity. Yet queer is a category still in the process of formation. In Queer Theory, Annamarie Jagose provides a clear and concise explanation of queer theory, tracing it as part of an intriguing history of same-sex love over the last century. Blending insights from prominent theorists such as Judith Butler and David Halperin, Jagose argues that queer theory's challenge is to create new ways of thinking, not only about fixed sexual identities such as heterosexual and homosexual, but also about other supposedly essential notions such as sexuality and gender and even man and woman. (view table of contents)

Product Description: This pathbreaking anthology turns first to the historical tradition in homosexual theory, from Plato to Freud, and then explores the (post)modern canon: Derrida, Lacan, Foucault, Barthes, Irigaray, and Butler. It then situates classic and (post)modern discourses in a dialectical relation to historical materialist theories that go beyond the ethics of desire to relate sexuality to global social struggles...read more

Product Description: "Adventures in Lesbian Philosophy" explores diverse positive understandings of "lesbian philosophy." Tangren Alexander and Joyce Trebilcot critique the dualisms and methods of traditional Euro-American philosophy and offer creative experiments in wisdom-seeking; Bat-Ami Bar On and Lorena Leigh Saxe examine areas of contested sexual behaviors, such as pornography and sadomasochism; Elizabeth Deumer and Jacquelyn Zita take up the issue of constructing the meaning of "lesbian"; and Chris Cuomo, Barbara Houston, Ruthann Robson, Sarah Lucia Hoagland, and Kathleen Martindale and Martha Saunders discuss facets of lesbian community and responsibility...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Katie King examines the development of U.S. feminist theory, tracing its inception, rocky development, and internecine struggles. She argues that the subject matter of women’s studies is cultural studies."This book should definitively alter the map of contemporary feminist theory in the U...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)