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This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996.
This book argues that hierarchies in interpersonal relations are inextricably linked to the main power differentials of our social and political life (gender, class, age, and race); therefore it is not surprising that they govern our psychic lives. Recent writing enables an exploration of their positive potential, especially in fantasy, as well as their danger. The book focuses on the writing of the last thirty years, revisiting also Whitman, Wilde, Mann, Forster, and Genet, and reassessing the very idea of a gay canon.
An examination of the transformation of a town from a Portuguese ethnic community into a predominantly homosexual tourist enclave. Focuses on Provincetown RI Based on over six years of fieldwork, Sandra L. Faiman-Silva's The Courage to Connect traces the transformation of the well-known Cape Cod community of Provincetown from its nineteenth century origins a Portuguese fishing town to its present status as a welcoming, sexually diverse tourist enclave. The book critically examines the history of the Portuguese ethnic community and the local economy, as well as the nature of intersections between gay and straight culture in areas such as public education, local government, and the police. Using queer and critical culture theory to deconstruct day-to-day local encounters, it lays bare the roots of social conflicts and how they can be resolved. Capturing the pathos and joy of a community that has struggled to accommodate radical social changes, The Courage to Connect serves as a model for understanding how communities can construct themselves to overcome their differences.
In Their Own Receive Them Not, Griffin provides a historical overview and critical analysis of the black church and its current engagement with lesbian and gay Christians, and shares ways in which black churches can learn to reach out and confront all types of oppression--not just race--in order to do the work of the black community.
Adoptive Families in a Diverse Society brings together twenty-one prominent scholars to explore the experience, practice, and policy of adoption in North America. While much existing literature tends to stress the potential problems inherent in non-biological kinship, the essays in this volume consider adoptive family life in a broad and balanced context. Bringing new perspectives to the topics of kinship, identity, and belonging, this path-breaking book expands more than our understandings of adoptive family life; it urges us to rethink the limits and possibilities of diversity and assimilation in American society.
Sexual Identities and the Media encourages students to examine media as a site of negotiation for how people make sense of their own and others’ sexual identities. Taking a critical/cultural approach, Wendy Hilton-Morrow and Kathleen Battles weave together theory, synthesis of existing research, and original analysis of contemporary media examples in order to explore key areas of debate, including: an historical context for contemporary GLBTQ representations; the advantages and limitations of media visibility, including a discussion of the strengths and limitations of stereotype research and the quest for "positive" representations; the role of consumer culture in constructing GLBTQ identi...
Even after a rise in gay and Black representation and production on TV in the 1990s, the sitcom became a "generic closet," restricting Black gay characters with narrative tropes. Drawing from 20 interviews with credited episode writers, key show-runners, and Black gay men, The Generic Closet situates Black-cast sitcoms as a unique genre that uses Black gay characters in service of the series' heterosexual main cast. Alfred L. Martin, Jr., argues that the Black community is considered to be antigay due to misrepresentation by shows that aired during the family viewing hour and that were written for the imagined, "traditional" Black family. Martin considers audience reception, industrial production practices, and authorship to unpack the claim that Black gay characters are written into Black-cast sitcoms such as Moesha, Good News, and Let's Stay Together in order to closet Black gayness. By exploring how systems of power produce ideologies about Black gayness, The Generic Closet deconstructs the concept of a monolithic Black audience and investigates whether this generic closet still exists.
This transdisciplinary project represents the most comprehensive study of imagination to date. The eclectic group of international scholars who comprise Imagination and Art propose bold and innovative theoretical frameworks for (re-) conceptualizing imagination in all of its divergent forms.
Performance artist and scholar E. Patrick Johnson’s provocative study examines how blackness is appropriated and performed—toward widely divergent ends—both within and outside African American culture. Appropriating Blackness develops from the contention that blackness in the United States is necessarily a politicized identity—avowed and disavowed, attractive and repellent, fixed and malleable. Drawing on performance theory, queer studies, literary analysis, film criticism, and ethnographic fieldwork, Johnson describes how diverse constituencies persistently try to prescribe the boundaries of "authentic" blackness and how performance highlights the futility of such enterprises. Johns...
The book is in 2 parts. The first part looks at the historical aspect of Blacks and sexuality. It begins in Africa and the sexuality among various tribes. It moves along into American slavery and the sexuality of the slaves and how sex was used against them. It then moves into Reconstruction and into the 20th century and how relationships among Blacks were influenced by the history. This section shows how the relationships between Black men and women were damaged by societal laws that were created to tear apart the Black family unit. The second part of the book looks at other sexual and relationship issues for Blacks in America. Some of the topics include Black skin color (light vs. dark), Sexually Transmitted Diseases and Blacks, Black gays, lesbians and Homophobia, Black sexual relationships and Black sexual stereotypes and their effect on Black sexuality.