The essays in Racialized Politics of Desire in Personal Ads explore complex intersections among the social categories of race, gender and sexuality within personal ads, revealing a dynamic tapestry of power relations and hierarchies. The ephemeral nature of personal ads, their anonymity, the space limitations, and the linguistic encoding characteristic of the genre make it an interesting and important opportunity to witness the performative nature of identity politics.
Peter. Pecker. Wiener. Dick. Schlong. Penis. Whatever we choose to call it, the penis is more than just a body part. This A-to-Z encyclopedia explores the cultural meanings, interpretations, and activities associated with the penis over the centuries and across cultures. Scholars, activists, researchers and clinicians delve into the penis in antiquity, in art, in religion, in politics, in media, in music, and in the cultural imagination. They examine the penis as a problem, a fetishized commodity, a weapon, an object of play. Penile décor and fashions—from piercings to koteka—are treated with equal dignity. Explanation of common medical terms and not-so-common subcultural practices add to the broad scope of the book. Taken together, the Cultural Encyclopedia of the Penis offers refreshing, thoughtful, and wide-ranging insight into this malleable, meaningful body part.
Same-sex attracted, and non-gender conforming African-Americans are substantial in number, yet underrepresented in the social and behavioral science literature. This volume addresses the issues of African-American LGBT psychology as a case of indigenous psychology. The authors present the research of scholars who are developing theory, practice, and services that are couched within the specific cultural complexities of this population. Some key topics addressed in AFrican-American Issues in LGBT Psychology are gender, spirituality, family, racism, "coming out", generational differences, health and safety issues, urban vs. rural realities, and implications for researchers.
To fit a changing society, the conventional ways we date and mate have given way to brand new methods. People nowadays marry later in life, choose not to marry at all, seek partners after divorce, outlive spouses, relocate to new areas and even endure pandemics. This signifies that we are moving toward larger dating pools, something made possible through public personal advertising. This text details personal advertising in print and digital media, as well as online dating services, speed dating, the use of mobile dating apps and other topics. Interviews reveal the appeal and limitations of personal advertising for meeting people. This book offers a window into the development of trust and relationships, as well as the increasing role technology plays in shaping how people meet and mate in the modern world.
This book explores the politics of artistic creativity, examining how black artists in Africa and the diaspora create art as a procedure of self-making. Essays cross continents to uncover the efflorescence of black culture in national and global contexts and in literature, film, performance, music, and visual art. Contributors place the concerns of black artists and their works within national and transnational conversations on anti-black racism, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, migration, resettlement, resistance, and transnational feminisms. Does art by the subaltern fulfill the liberatory potential that critics have ascribed to it? What other possibilities does political art offer? Together, these essays sort through the aesthetics of daily life to build a thesis that reflects the desire of black artists and cultures to remake themselves and their world.
Oprah Winfrey has long promoted black issues by being involved as a producer or actor in the adaptation of works by African American writers for film. This volume evaluates Winfrey's involvement in the visual interpretation of African American literary texts using film, music, black masculinity, black feminist, and cultural theory.
With the volume's global perspective and comparative framework, this collection contributes to the ongoing scholarly examination of consumption by taking the topic of women, material culture, and consumption into new arenas. The essays explore the connections between consumption and subjectivity; they build upon and complicate the idea that consumption, as a form of meaning making, is key to the construction of gendered, classed, and national identities. Providing a cross-cultural perspective on consumption, the essays are historically specific case studies. While some essays examine women's consumption in a range of Anglophone and Francophone locations, primarily in Britain, France, Australia, Canada, and the US, other essays on Chinese, Senegalese, Indian, and Mexican women's consumption, particularly as it relates to fashion and design, provide a comparative framework that will recalibrate ongoing discussions about consumption and domesticity, dress and identity, and desire and subjectivity. In addition to its focus on gender and consumption, this volume addresses gender and collecting, exploring the tensions between accumulation and systematic collecting. Also examined is the way in which the display of collected objects?in Impressionists' paintings, in mass-produced illustrations, in the glass cases of museums and department stores?participates in the construction of particular identities as well as serving as a kind of value-producing material practice.
Garry Wotherspoon’s Gay Sydney: A History is an updated version of his 1991 classic, City of the Plain: History of a Gay Sub-culture, written in the midst of the AIDS crisis. In this vivid book Wotherspoon traces the shifts that have occurred since then, including majority support for marriage equality and anti-discrimination legislation. He also ponders the parallel evaporation of a distinctly gay sensibility and the disappearance of once-packed gay bars that have now become cafes and gyms. This book also tells the story of gay Sydney across a century, looking at secret, underground gay life, the never-ending debates about sex in society and the role of social movements in the ’60 and ’70s in effecting social change.
The first collection focused on the writing of provocative author and performance artist Sapphire, including her groundbreaking novel PUSH that has since become the Academy-award-winning film Precious.
Esteemed contributors expand the range of possibilities for reading, understanding, and teaching children's literature as ethnic literature rather than children's literature in this ambitious collection.