Communists, Cowboys, and Queers
Author : David Savran
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 29,6 MB
Release : 1992
Category : American drama
ISBN : 9781452902395
Author : David Savran
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 29,6 MB
Release : 1992
Category : American drama
ISBN : 9781452902395
Author : David Savran
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
Page : 252 pages
File Size : 39,25 MB
Release : 2003
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780472068364
An eclectic collection of essays on theater and its decline as highbrow culture, under the influence of theme parks and blockbuster movies
Author : David Savran
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 393 pages
File Size : 10,39 MB
Release : 1998-03-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1400822467
From the Beat poets' incarnation of the "white Negro" through Iron John and the Men's Movement to the paranoid masculinity of Timothy McVeigh, white men in this country have increasingly imagined themselves as victims. In Taking It Like a Man, David Savran explores the social and sexual tensions that have helped to produce this phenomenon. Beginning with the 1940s, when many white, middle-class men moved into a rule-bound, corporate culture, Savran sifts through literary, cinematic, and journalistic examples that construct the white man as victimized, feminized, internally divided, and self-destructive. Savran considers how this widely perceived loss of male power has played itself out on both psychoanalytical and political levels as he draws upon various concepts of masochism--the most counterintuitive of the so-called perversions and the one most insistently associated with femininity. Savran begins with the writings and self-mythologization of Beat writers William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac. Although their independent, law-defying lifestyles seemed distinctively and ruggedly masculine, their literary art and personal relations with other men in fact allowed them to take up social and psychic positions associated with women and racial minorities. Arguing that this dissident masculinity has become increasingly central to U.S. culture, Savran analyzes the success of Sam Shepard as both writer and star, as well as the emergence of a new kind of action hero in movies like Rambo and Twister. He contends that with the limited success of the civil rights and women's movements, white masculinity has been reconfigured to reflect the fantasy that the white male has become the victim of the scant progress made by African Americans and women. Taking It Like a Man provocatively applies psychoanalysis to history. The willingness to inflict pain upon the self, for example, serves as a measure of men's attempts to take control of their situations and their ambiguous relationship to women. Discussing S/M and sexual liberation in their historical contexts enables Savran to consider not only the psychological function of masochism but also the broader issues of political and social power as experienced by both men and women.
Author : Alisa Solomon
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 217 pages
File Size : 15,75 MB
Release : 2003-09-02
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 1134728948
Re-Dressing the Canon examines the relationship between gender and performance in a series of essays which combine the critique of specific live performances with an astute theoretical analysis. Alisa Solomon discusses both canonical texts and contemporary productions in a lively jargon-free style. Among the dramatic texts considered are those of Aristophanes, Ibsen, Yiddish theatre, Mabou Mines, Deborah Warner, Shakespeare, Brecht, Split Britches, Ridiculous Theatre, and Tony Kushner. Bringing to bear theories of 'gender performativity' upon theatrical events, the author explores: * the 'double disguise' of cross-dressed boy-actresses * how gender relates to genre (particularly in Ibsens' realism) * how canonical theatre represented gender in ways which maintain traditional images of masculinity and femininity.
Author : Jacqueline O’Connor
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 229 pages
File Size : 12,21 MB
Release : 2016-05-31
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1611478944
Gender and cultural studies readings of Tennessee Williams’s work have provided diverse perspectives on his complex representations of sexuality, whether of himself as an openly gay man, or of his characters, many of whom narrate or dramatize sexual attitudes or behavior that cross heteronormative boundaries of the mid-century period. Several of these studies have positioned Williams and his work amid the public tensions in American life over roughly four decades, from 1940–1980, as notions of equality and freedom of choice challenged prejudice and repression in law and in society. To date, however, neither Williams’s homosexuality nor his persistent representations of sexual transgressions have been examined as legal matters that challenged the rule of law. Directed by legal history and informed by multiple strands of Williams’s studies criticism, textual, and cultural, this book explores the interplay of select topics defined and debated in law’s texts with those same topics in Williams’s personal and imaginative texts. By tracing the obscure and the transparent representations of homosexuality, specifically, and diverse sexualities more generally, through selected stories and plays, the book charts the intersections between Williams’s literature and the laws that governed the period. His imaginative works, backlit by his personal documents and historical and legal records from the period, underscore his preoccupation with depictions of diverse sexualities throughout his career. His use of legal language and its varied effects on his texts demonstrate his work’s multiple and complex intersection with major twentieth-century concerns, including significant legal and cultural dialogues about identity formation, intimacy, privacy, and difference.
Author : Luca Prono
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 326 pages
File Size : 19,72 MB
Release : 2007-12-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 031305505X
During the 20th century through today, gay and lesbian artists, writers, political activists, and sports figures contributed their talents to all areas of popular culture. Authors such as E. Lynn Harris and Patricia Highsmith write bestselling novels. Rupert Everett follows in the footsteps of Rock Hudson and others who starred in multimillion dollar films. George Michael and k.d.lang have been the creative forces behind dozens of hit songs, and the TV programs of Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie O'Donnell, and the cast of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy are enjoyed in gay and straight households alike. The Encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Popular Culture identifies the people, films, TV shows, literature, and sports figures that have made significant contributions to both gay and lesbian popular culture, and American popular culture.
Author : Harold Bloom
Publisher : Infobase Publishing
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 20,40 MB
Release : 2009
Category : American literature
ISBN : 1438113498
Presents a collection of critical essays on Williams and his works, arranged in chronological order of publication.
Author : Robert J. Corber
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 254 pages
File Size : 47,82 MB
Release : 1997-05-22
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 082238244X
Challenging widely held assumptions about postwar gay male culture and politics, Homosexuality in Cold War America examines how gay men in the 1950s resisted pressures to remain in the closet. Robert J. Corber argues that a form of gay male identity emerged in the 1950s that simultaneously drew on and transcended left-wing opposition to the Cold War cultural and political consensus. Combining readings of novels, plays, and films of the period with historical research into the national security state, the growth of the suburbs, and postwar consumer culture, Corber examines how gay men resisted the "organization man" model of masculinity that rose to dominance in the wake of World War II. By exploring the representation of gay men in film noir, Corber suggests that even as this Hollywood genre reinforced homophobic stereotypes, it legitimized the gay male "gaze." He emphasizes how film noir’s introduction of homosexual characters countered the national "project" to render gay men invisible, and marked a deep subversion of the Cold War mentality. Corber then considers the work of gay male writers Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, and James Baldwin, demonstrating how these authors declined to represent homosexuality as a discrete subculture and instead promoted a model of political solidarity rooted in the shared experience of oppression. Homosexuality in Cold War America reveals that the ideological critique of the dominant culture made by gay male authors of the 1950s laid the foundation for the gay liberation movement of the following decade.
Author : Alan Sinfield
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 428 pages
File Size : 43,18 MB
Release : 1999-01-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780300081022
This intriguing, authoritative book tracks stage representations of lesbians and gay men from Oscar Wilde to the present day and examines scores of British and American plays and playwrights, including works by Wilde, Maugham, Coward, Hellman, O'Neill, Le Roi Jones, and Joe Orton.
Author : Timothy Murphy
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 762 pages
File Size : 32,60 MB
Release : 2013-10-18
Category : Reference
ISBN : 1135942412
The Reader's Guide to Lesbian and Gay Studies surveys the field in some 470 entries on individuals (Adrienne Rich); arts and cultural studies (Dance); ethics, religion, and philosophical issues (Monastic Traditions); historical figures, periods, and ideas (Germany between the World Wars); language, literature, and communication (British Drama); law and politics (Child Custody); medicine and biological sciences (Health and Illness); and psychology, social sciences, and education (Kinsey Report).