John DEmilio, another queer historian, connects the development of modern gay identity to nineteenth-century urbanization and industrialization. It works for legal protections for LGBTQ+ persons, such as promoting legislation to prevent discrimination and hate crimes. According to Nguyen, this reinvention of the term bottom has the potential to interrupt, disrupt, and transform sexual, gender, and racial norms (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014). Introduction to LGBTQ+ Studies: A Cross-Disciplinary Approach by Jennifer Miller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. In other words, what becomes tied to heteronormativity is not femininity but masculinity, and homophobic dynamics are doubled by patriarchal relations of power. Job discrimination, housing discrimination, street harassment, and access to identification documents are central to the politics of queers of color as well as women and lower-income members of the LGBTQ+ community. The desire for radical social change that is central to the queer theoretical project is discussed further in the next section. universalizing. Has someone you know had their gender presentation challenged or censored? Refers to the performance of femininity or masculinity, and is most frequently used to describe the performance of gender expressions that differ from those associated with the performers natal sex assignment. It is the name that can be given to a historical construct.[8] By rejecting the idea that something called sexuality exists in all of us, waiting to be liberated, Foucaults work challenged not only how sexuality was understood in popular and scholarly discourses but also how power was understood. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick was an American academician specializing in literary criticism and feminist analysis; she is known as one of the architects of queer theory. Sexual Futures, Queer Futures, and Other Latina Longings, by Juana Maria Rodrguez. African Urban Sexualities After Queer Visibilities | SpringerLink Sedgwick's "Queer and Now": Queer Theory at its Most Tangible His bookDisidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics(1999) uses performance studies to investigate the performance, activism, and survival of queer people of color. The conference proceedings were later collected in a 1991 special issue ofDifferences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. A political ideology that espouses economic liberalism, such as trade liberalization and financial deregulation, and small government. Since the late 1980s, queer studies and theory have become vital to the intellectual and political life of the United States. A political ideology that espouses economic liberalism, such as trade liberalization and financial deregulation, and small government. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (/ s d w k /; May 2, 1950 - April 12, 2009) was an American academic scholar in the fields of gender studies, queer theory (queer studies), and critical theory.Sedgwick published several books considered groundbreaking in the field of queer theory, including Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985), Epistemology of the Closet (1990 . This view sees homosexuals as a specific group of people, a minority, within a largely heterosexual world. Also known as Judith Halberstam, a gender and queer theorist and author, perhaps best known for work on tomboys and female masculinity. She is an independent scholar and high school teacher. The play of her mind as it goes from Henry James to John Waters and Divine, from AIDS to Jane Austen and women's anal eroticism, is dazzling. This living list of queer scholarship includes many important intersectional texts (https://www.brown.edu/campus-life/support/lgbtq/graduate-student-resources/queer-theory-reading-list). Overlapping or intersecting social identities, such as race, class, and gender, that are produced by social structures of inequality. Identify key approaches and debates within the field of queer theory. Both activism and theory are historically and geographically contingent, tethered to time, space, and the material body in its specificity. In other words, a binary sex-gender system that assumes a correlation between sex and gender is an effect of power, not nature. Your email address will not be published. Continuing the analysis of the previous chapter, Victorian and Gothic literature marked another shift in what came to define the heterosexual/homosexual binary. The scientific study of human sexuality, including human sexual interests, behaviors, and functions. Duke University Press - Reading Sedgwick An institutionalized way of thinking and speaking, which creates a social boundary defining what can be said about a specific topic. De Lauretis claimed that differences were collapsed within lesbian and gay studies and the experience of white middle-class gay men was privileged. Chapter 6: Prejudice and Discrimination against LGBTQ+ People, Sean G. Massey; Sarah R. Young; and Ann Merriwether, Thomas Lawrence Long; Christine Rodriguez; Marianne Snyder; and Ryan J. Watson, Chapter 8: LGBTQ+ Relationships and Families, Jennifer Miller; Maddison Lauren Simmons; Robert Bittner; Mycroft M. Roske; Cathy Corder; and Olivia Wood, Chapter 12: A Practical Guide for LGBTQ+ Studies, Appendix A: Judith Butler Video Transcription, Appendix B: Lukas Avendao: Reflections from muxeidad, Appendix C: In Han Dynasty China, Bisexuality Was the Norm, Appendix D: What is a Fa'afafine Video Transcription, Appendix E: Queer Archaeology: Some Basics Video Transcription, Appendix G: Watch A Couple In Their 80s Get Married In Dallas County's First Same-Sex Ceremony Video Transcription, Appendix H: Care to the Trans- and Gender Non-Conforming Identified Patient Video Transcription. It explains the problematic and complicated histories of library classification of queer texts and includes an excellent bibliography of queer theorists. homophile movement. The view that identity is a sociocultural construct that influences identity formation. His project explores the ways minoritarian subjects mobilize performance to survive the present, improvise new worlds, and sustain new ways of being in the world.[43]. Social constructionism also influenced understandings of gender. About, Human Rights Campaign, accessed May 12, 2021, L. Duggan, The New Homonormativity: The Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism, in. Published by Duke University Press 1983 Queer and Now From the book Tendencies Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822381860-002 Cite this 2 You currently have no access to view or download this content. Upon completion of this chapter, students will be able to do the following: It is a challenge to create an origin story about a field of study, in this instance queer theory, because ideas are not birthed in a moment, a day, or even a year. An academic in the fields of performance studies, visual culture, queer theory, cultural studies, and critical theory. Describe the relationship among LGBTQ+ history, political activism, and LGBTQ+ studies. Sedgwick, Eve. First published in 1985, Between Men was a decisive intervention in gender studies, a book that all but singlehandedly dislodged a tradition of literary critique that suppressed queer subjects and subjectivities. Meg-John Barker, an academic and activist, teamed up with the cartoonist Jules Scheele in this nonfiction graphic novel to illuminate the histories of queer thought and LGBTQ+ action (London: Icon Books, 2016). PDF WGSS 392Q Introduction to Queer Theory - UMass What do we mean when we talk about gender performativity and the implications of the constructionist turn? However, perhaps her discussion of her struggle with breast cancer and how it affects her gender and sexual identity, a necessary and poignant tale in itself, may have been better developed and resonated in a separate memoir-centered piece in Tendencies. Office hours by appointment. "Queer and Now." InCruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, Muoz explores the critical imagination, which he refers to as transformative thought that can prompt and shape social change. She applies queer theory to her activism and advocacy, pursuing the notion that LGBTQ+ equality will be achieved once heteronormativity and homonormativity within the institutions of family, society, and government are interrupted, disrupted, and decentered to become more inclusive of racial, gender, and economic diversity (New York: Magnus Books, 2012).