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Top Three Finalist for the 2010 John Hope Franklin Publication Prize presented by the American Studies Association Theories of intersectionality have fundamentally transformed how feminists and critical race scholars understand the relationship between race and gender, but are often limited in their focus on contemporary experiences of interlocking oppressions. In The Specter of Sex, Sally L. Kitch explores the "backstory" of intersectionality theory—the historical formation of the racial and gendered hierarchies that continue to structure U.S. culture today. Kitch uses a genealogical approach to explore how a world already divided by gender ideology became one simultaneously obsessed with...
In The Morality of Gay Rights, Ball presents a comprehensive exploration of the connection between gay rights and political philosophy. He discusses the writing of contemporary political and legal philosophers-including Rawls, Walzer, Nussbaum, Sandel, Rorty and Dworkin-to evaluate how their theoretical frameworks fit the specific gay rights controversies, such as same-sex marriage and parenting by lesbians and gay men, that are part of our nation's political and legal debates.
Patricia Boling investigates the implications of privacy for feminist theory and legal philosophy, examining issues rooted in intimate life which have broad public impact. She draws on Hannah Arendt's work and ordinary language analysis to identify confusions in the way we think about public and private. She then uses the insights she has developed to illuminate issues in contemporary politics, such as the problem of transforming private identities into political ones in the ?outing? of lesbians and gay men. Another such issue is the relevance of the private experience of nurturing small children to the political activity of the citizen. Evenly divided between theoretical and issue-oriented discussion, this book makes clear the practical stakes in both the distinction and the connection between private and public. Boling considers how to translate private experience into public claims with regard to such contentious issues as shared parenting, abortion funding, fetal abuse, sodomy laws, and parental consent for minors seeking abortions. She also analyzes the application of privacy in landmark legal cases including Roe v. Wade, Bowers v. Hardwick, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Democratic Anxieties: Same-Sex Marriage, Death, and Citizenship takes contemporary opposition to same-sex marriage as a starting point to consider anxieties about sex and death within conceptions of democratic citizenship. It pursues a less anxious democratic citizenship in creative readings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Hannah Arendt, and Friedrich Nietzsche, and demonstrates how developing an appreciation of mortality is essential to the continued pluralization of democracy.
London and the Culture of Homosexuality explores the relationship between London and male homosexuality from the criminalisation of all 'acts of gross indecency' between men in 1885 to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 - years marked by an intensification in concern about male-male relationships and also by the emergence of an embryonic homosexual rights movement. Taking his cue from literary and lesbian and gay scholars, urban historians and cultural geographers, Matt Cook combines discussion of London's homosexual subculture and various major and minor scandals with a detailed examination of representations in the press, in science and in literature. The conjunction of approaches used in this study provides fresh insights into the development of ideas about the modern homosexual and into the many different ways of comprehending and taking part in London's culture of homosexuality.
The essays in Marriage Proposals envision a variety of scenarios in which adults would continue to join themselves together seeking permanent companionship and sustenance, linking sexual intimacy to a long commitment, usually caring for each other, and building new families. What would disappear are the legal consequences associated with marriage. No joint income tax return; no immigration privileges like the “fiancée visa” or the right to bring in a husband or wife; no special statuses for prison visits or hospital decisions; no prerogative to remain silent in court by claiming “confidential marital communications”; no pension entitlements; no marital benefits and detriments regard...
Why is shame so central to our identity and to our culture? What is its role in stigmatizing subcultures such as the Irish, the queer or the underclass? Can shame be understood as a productive force? In this lucid and passionately argued book, Sally R. Munt explores the vicissitudes of shame across a range of texts, cultural milieux, historical locations and geographical spaces - from eighteenth-century Irish politics to Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, from contemporary US academia to the aesthetics of Tracey Emin. She finds that the dynamics of shame are consistent across cultures and historical periods, and that patterns of shame are disturbingly long-lived. But she also reveals shame as an affective emotion, engendering attachments between bodies and between subjects - queer attachments. Above all, she celebrates the extraordinary human ability to turn shame into joy: the party after the fall. Queer Attachments is an interdisciplinary synthesis of cultural politics, emotions theory and narrative that challenges us to think about the queerly creative proclivities of shame.
This groundbreaking history challenges traditional assumptions about the development of British democracy and the struggle for women's rights.