Lesbian Culture


Book Description

Essays, stories, pictures, cartoons help to explain the culture of the lesbian.




Out in Culture


Book Description

Out in Culture charts some of the ways in which lesbians, gays, and queers have understood and negotiated the pleasures and affirmations, as well as the disappointments, of mass culture. The essays collected here, combining critical and theoretical works from a cross-section of academics, journalists, and artists, demonstrate a rich variety of gay and lesbian approaches to film, television, popular music, and fashion. This wide-ranging anthology is the first to juxtapose pioneering work in gay and lesbian media criticism with recent essays in contemporary queer cultural studies. Uniquely accessible, Out in Culture presents such popular writers as B. Ruby Rich, Essex Hemphill, and Michael Musto as well as influential critics such as Richard Dyer, Chris Straayer, and Julia Lesage, on topics ranging from the queer careers of Agnes Moorehead and Pee Wee Herman to the cultural politics of gay drag, lesbian style, the visualization of AIDS, and the black snap! queen experience. Of particular interest are two "dossiers," the first linking essays on the queer content of Alfred Hitchcock's films, and the second on the production and reception of popular music within gay and lesbian communities. The volume concludes with an extensive bibliography--the most comprehensive currently available--of sources in gay, lesbian, and queer media criticism. Out in Culture explores the distinctive and original ways in which gays, lesbians, and queers have experienced, appropriated, and resisted the images and artifacts of popular culture. This eclectic anthology will be of interest to a broad audience of general readers and scholars interested in gay and lesbian issues; students of film, media, gender, and cultural studies; and those interested in the emerging field of queer theory. Contributors. Sabrina Barton, Edith Becker, Rhona J. Berenstein, Nayland Blake, Michelle Citron, Danae Clark, Corey K. Creekmur, Alexander Doty, Richard Dyer, Heather Findlay, Jan Zita Grover, Essex Hemphill, John Hepworth, Jeffrey Hilbert, Lucretia Knapp, Bruce La Bruce, Al LaValley, Julia Lesage, Michael Moon, Michael Musto, B. Ruby Rich, Marlon Riggs, Arlene Stein, Chris Straayer, Anthony Thomas, Mark Thompson, Valerie Traub, Thomas Waugh, Patricia White, Robin Wood




The Disappearing L


Book Description

A 2018 Over the Rainbow Selection presented by the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Round Table (GLBTRT) of the American Library Association LGBT Americans now enjoy the right to marry—but what will we remember about the vibrant cultural spaces that lesbian activists created in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s? Most are vanishing from the calendar—and from recent memory. The Disappearing L explores the rise and fall of the hugely popular women-only concerts, festivals, bookstores, and support spaces built by and for lesbians in the era of woman-identified activism. Through the stories unfolding in these chapters, anyone unfamiliar with the Michigan festival, Olivia Records, or the women's bookstores once dotting the urban landscape will gain a better understanding of the era in which artists and activists first dared to celebrate lesbian lives. This book offers the backstory to the culture we are losing to mainstreaming and assimilation. Through interviews with older activists, it also responds to recent attacks on lesbian feminists who are being made to feel that they've hit their cultural expiration date.




Lesbian Histories and Cultures


Book Description

To reflect this crucial fact, The Encyclopedia of Lesbian and Gay Histories and Cultures has been prepared in two separate volumes to assure that both histories receive full, unbiased attention and that a broad range of human experience is covered."--BOOK JACKET.




Queer Representations


Book Description

Queer Representations celebrates the eclectic, diverse nature of gay and lesbian culture and its production. The volume begins by asking how we can interpret an image--is the image homosexual and if so, how can we understand it? Closely connected to its interpretation is how we visualize homosexuality, or, in Allen Ellenzweig's term, how we picture the homoerotic, the organizing principle of a section devoted to American cinema and performance in general. The crucial role of biography and autobiography is the central preoccupation of the next section, with essays on Radclyffe Hall, Langston Hughes, and Louisa May Alcott. Featuring many of the most respected figures in queer studies and contemporary queer literature, among them Dorothy Allison, Edmund White, Barbara Smith, Essex Hemphill, Michael Cunningham, Allen Ginsberg, Samuel R. Delany, Dale Peck, Jewelle Gomez, Joan Nestle, a final section explores the creation of queer literature, birthpangs, growing pains, and achievements. By emphasizing the interconnectedness of gay and lesbian lives and the literature which has been instrumental in defining, reconstructing, and representing these lives, this anthology serves as a diverse introduction to queer culture and literature.




The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People


Book Description

At a time when lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals-often referred to under the umbrella acronym LGBT-are becoming more visible in society and more socially acknowledged, clinicians and researchers are faced with incomplete information about their health status. While LGBT populations often are combined as a single entity for research and advocacy purposes, each is a distinct population group with its own specific health needs. Furthermore, the experiences of LGBT individuals are not uniform and are shaped by factors of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, geographical location, and age, any of which can have an effect on health-related concerns and needs. The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People assesses the state of science on the health status of LGBT populations, identifies research gaps and opportunities, and outlines a research agenda for the National Institute of Health. The report examines the health status of these populations in three life stages: childhood and adolescence, early/middle adulthood, and later adulthood. At each life stage, the committee studied mental health, physical health, risks and protective factors, health services, and contextual influences. To advance understanding of the health needs of all LGBT individuals, the report finds that researchers need more data about the demographics of these populations, improved methods for collecting and analyzing data, and an increased participation of sexual and gender minorities in research. The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People is a valuable resource for policymakers, federal agencies including the National Institute of Health (NIH), LGBT advocacy groups, clinicians, and service providers.




Lesbian Philosophies and Cultures


Book Description

The lesbians who have contributed to this book are theorists and activists who write as members of diverse lesbian cultures. Each lesbian has her ways of knowing, her voices, approaches, methodologies, languages. Each lesbian reflects, directly and indirectly, her relations to her own and to other ethnicities, races, social classes, physical abilities, ages, and nationalities. Each lesbian has distinctive perspectives on lesbian existence, friendships and sexualities, separatism and coalition building, theories of knowledge and ethics, language and writing. Lesbian Philosophies and Cultures is a hybrid site for discussion of, work on, and delight in this sometimes uneasy, sometimes painful, sometimes surprising and wonderful, lesbian pluralism. For this collection, some of the contributors have chosen to write in essay style, and some have chosen to write in fiction, autobiography, poetic prose and experimental forms. The contributors, all of whom live currently in the u.s.a. or quebec, are: Joyce Trebilcot, Vivienne Louise, Kitty Tsui, Ann Ferguson, Julia Penelope, Marthe Rosenfeld, Claudia Card, Anna Lee, María Lugones, Edwina Franchild, Caryatis Cardea, Baba Copper, Bette S. Tallen, Michèle Causse, Sarah Lucia Hoagland, Nett Hart, Marilyn Frye, Kim Hall, Jacquelyn N. Zita, Monique Wittig, Nicole Brossard, Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Jeffner Allen.




Inventing Lesbian Cultures


Book Description

This pioneering collection of essays explores some of the many and varied ways that women might use a particular idea of being lesbian to invent themselves, to understand how they are connected in the world, and to imagine notions of community. Focused through an anthropological lens, contributors explore a wide range of expressions that bind different lesbian communities together—from dance club culture to lesbian wedding ceremonies, from lesbian life in the 1920s to lesbian motherhood today. As a whole, Inventing Lesbian Cultures in America shows how communities and identities allow for a sense of collective meaning for lesbians today. Defined in terms of culture, the activities, alliances, and identities that make up the experience of being lesbian imbue their lives with dignity and stability. Inventing Lesbian Cultures in America will become required reading for anyone interested in gender and sexual identity.




Encyclopedia of Lesbian and Gay Histories and Cultures


Book Description

Beginning in 1869, when the study of homosexuality can be said to have begun with the establishment of sexology, this Encyclopedia offers accounts of the most important international developments in an area that now occupies a critical place in many fields of academic endeavours. While gays and lesbians have shared many aspects of life, their histories and cultures developed in profoundly different ways. To reflect this crucial fact, the Encyclopedia has been prepared in two separate volumes assuring that both histories receive full, unbiased attention and that a broad range of human experience is covered. Written by some of the most famous names in the field, as well as new researchers this is intended as a reference for students and scholars in all areas of study, as well as the general public.




Passions Between Women


Book Description

Passions Between Women looks at stories of lesbian desires, acts and identities from the Restoration to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Far from being invisible, the figure of the woman who felt passion for women in this period was a subject of confusion and contradiction: she could be put in a freak show as a 'hermaphrodite', denounced as a 'tribade' or 'lesbian', revered as a 'romantic friend', jailed as a 'female husband' or gossiped about as a 'woman-lover', 'tommy' or 'Sapphist'. Through an examination of a wealth of new medical, legal and erotic source material, together with re-readings of classics of English literature, Emma Donoghue uncovers the astonishing range of lesbian and bisexual identities described in British texts between 1668 and 1801. Female pirates and spiritual mentors, chambermaids and queens, poets and prostitutes, country idylls and whipping clubs all take their place in an intriguing panorama of lesbian lives and loves. 'Controversial, erotic and radical, Emma Donoghue's lesbian voyage of exploration outlines an astonishing spectrum of gender rebellion which creates a new map of eighteenth-century sexual territories and identities.' Patricia Duncker