Queer Ideas: The Kessler Lectures in Lesbian & Gay Studies

by Martin Duberman, Alissa Solomon

Overview

Exploring questions of sexuality and gender, this volume brings together ten core thinkers in the field of lesbian and gay studies and provides an essential introduction to this interdisciplinary field as well as the processes by which new—and queer—ideas are thought into being.

The collection begins with Joan Nestle, exploring the outsider status of lesbians through the complex life of a working-class black lesbian born in the South, who lived in New York and experienced the transition from complete marginalization to gay pride. It ends with Judith Butler, who speaks on broadening our concept of human rights in the aftermath of September 11. The collection also includes Edmund White on queer fiction and criticism, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick on the dialogics of love, John D'Emilio on gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, Esther Newton on being "butch", and lectures by Barbara Smith, Monique Wittig, Samuel R. Delany, and Cherrie Moraga. Alisa Solomon and Martin Duberman of CLAGS discuss the genesis of the lecture series and reflect on the evolution of lesbian and gay studies over its first ten years.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781558614499
Publisher:	Feminist Press at CUNY, The
Publication date:	12/01/2003
Series:	The David R. Kessler Lectures in Lesbian and Gay Studies
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

Table of Contents

	Foreword	1
	Introduction	5
	"I Lift My Face to the Hill": The Life of Mabel Hampton as Told by a White Woman 1992	21
	The Personal Is Political: Queer Fiction and Criticism 1993	41
	African American Lesbian and Gay History: An Exploration 1994	51
	Reading and Comments: Virgile, non/Across the Acheron 1995	63
	My Butch Career: A Memoir 1996	81
	... 3, 2, 1, Contact 1997	99
	A Dialogue on Love 1998	137
	A Biographer and His Subject: Wrestling with Bayard Rustin 1999	169
	A Xicanadyke Codex of Changing Consciousness 2000	185
	Global Violence, Sexual Politics 2001	197
	Permissions Acknowledgments	215

Editorial Reviews

"This book is sharp, clear, and terrifically moving: the book's introduction and contributors remind us of the centrality of articulation to the project of liberation. We have written our way out of the depths of oppression and we have a long, long way to go." — Tony Kushner, author of Angels in America

"Rarely can you see history being made. With this book, you will see an outrageous idea—LGBTQ studies, queer studies—happen before your eyes. You will see here how it grows, with new insights being created, criticized, dreamed, defended, remade. By the end of this book you will understand why it remains so vital and animated and insistent. And why it continues to go forward." — Amber Hollibaugh, author of My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home

"Brave and brilliant, fabulous and deep, these ten visionary thinkers teach us how queer ideas can and must and do reshape the world." — David L. Eng, author of Racial Castration

"These essays explore how LGBTQ people at once belong and transform, how we are both central to and distinct from the mainstream in US society. The result is an eloquent, fresh book." — Urvashi Vaid, author of Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation

From the Publisher

This is an important collection of ten revised speeches from the prestigious Kessler lecture series at CUNY's Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, which attracts important thinkers in LGTBQ (Lesbian/Gay/Transgender/Bisexual/Queer) studies. Between 1992 and 2001, the series included Joan Nestle, Edmund White, Barbara Smith, Monique Wittig, Esther Newton, Samuel R. Delany, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, John D'Emilio, Cherrie Moraga, and Judith Butler, whose work is represented here. Taken as a whole, these essays are emblematic of the theoretical diversity that marks LGTBQ studies. For example, Nestle preserves the life stories of socially marginal lesbians, while Butler examines gender as a fluid variable that shifts according to historical context. The witty introduction, written by the past and current center directors, convincingly argues that "queer ideas can change the world," yet the essays themselves are uneven. Historicizing categories of identity is intellectually powerful, but some speakers declare, "I'm here, I'm queer" without explaining why being queer matters. A helpful addition to such standard LGTBQ texts as Queer Studies: An Interdisciplinary Reader (ed., Robert Corber) or The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (ed., Henry Abelove). Recommend for public and academic libraries.-Katherine C. Adams, Bowdoin Coll. Lib., Brunswick, ME Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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