The book offers an interdisciplinary examination of queer sexuality. It highlights the potential for diversification offered by articulations and studies of queer sexuality in art, media, literature, politics and activism.
Sexuality, religion and faith often have complex and conflicting interactions, on both personal and societal levels. Numerous studies have been conducted on queer subjects, but they have predominantly focused on ‘Western’ expressions of faith and queer identities. This book contributes to the wider scholarship on queer subjects by drawing on actual lived experiences of self-identifying gay and bisexual men in Malaysia. It discusses what we can learn from the realities of their lives that intersect with their religious, spiritual, theological or humanistic values in an Asian context. Analysed within the critical frameworks of queer theory and queer sexual theology, this study divulges the meanings ascribed to sexual identities and practices, as well as conceptualisations of masculinity, sexual desire, love and intimate physical connections. It also lays bare the complex negotiations between gender, desire and spirit, and how they can affect one another. Tying fascinating case studies and underexplored Asian theologies with wider conversations around sexuality and faith, this book will be of significant interest to scholars working in religious studies, theology, queer studies, sexuality studies and Asian studies.
Queering Femininity focuses on femininity as a style of gender presentation and asks how (and whether) it can be refigured as a creative and queer style of the body. Drawing on a range of feminist texts and interviews with self-identifying queer femmes from the LGBTQ community, Hannah McCann argues that the tendency to evaluate femininity as only either oppressive or empowering limits our understanding of its possibilities. She considers the dynamic aspects of feminine embodiment that cannot simply be understood in terms of gender normativity and negotiates a path between understanding both the attachments people hold to particular gender identities and styles, and recognising the punitive realities of dominant gender norms and expectations. Topics covered range from second wave feminist critiques of beauty culture, to the importance of hair in queer femme presentation. This book offers students and researchers of Gender, Queer and Sexuality Studies a fresh new take on the often troubled relationship between feminism and femininity, a critical but generous reading that highlights the potential for an affirmative orientation that is not confined by the demands of identity politics.
After more than 55 years of transmedia storytelling, 'Star Trek' is a global phenomenon that has never been more successful than it is today. 'Star Trek' fandom is worldwide, time tested, and growing, and academic interest in the franchise, both inside and outside of the classroom, is high; at the moment, more 'Star Trek' works are underway or in development simultaneously than at any other moment in history. Unlike works that focus on a limited number of stories/media in this franchise or only offer one expert’s or discipline’s insights, this accessible and multidisciplinary anthology includes analyses from a wide range of scholars and explores 'Star Trek' from its debut in 1966 to its current incarnations, considers its implications for and collaborations with fandom, and trace its ideas and meanings across series, media, and time. 'Star Trek: Essays Exploring the Final Frontier' will undoubtedly speak to academics in the field, students in the classroom, and informed lay readers and fans.
From the squares of Spain to indigenous land in Canada, protest camps are a tactic used around the world. Since 2011 they have gained prominence in recent waves of contentious politics, deployed by movements with wide-ranging demands for social change. Through a series of international and interdisciplinary case studies from five continents, this topical collection is the first to focus on protest camps as unique organisational forms that transcend particular social movements’ contexts. Whether erected in a park in Istanbul or a street in Mexico City, the significance of political encampments rests in their position as distinctive spaces where people come together to imagine alternative worlds and articulate contentious politics, often in confrontation with the state. Written by a wide range of experts in the field the book offers a critical understanding of current protest events and will help better understanding of new global forms of democracy in action.
Millennials and Gen Zers have been characterized as individualistic capitalist consumers, as politically unengaged and spiritually selfish, or only interested in identity politics. This edited collection, by bringing together younger generations of theologians, activists, campaigners, artists, and those working in politics, academia, the church, economics, or community work, offers a new narrative of justice- one that is globally aware and actively intersectional. Bringing together powerful young voices with a wealth of contextually grounded experiences of faith and justice, spreading over Mexico, India, Nagaland, Germany, Wales, Ecuador, South Africa, Palestine, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, Scotland, England and the Pacific, the chapters in this book imagine daring new possibilities. Together the chapters reveal a generation who face a burning, politically and religiously right-leaning, egotistical world, and who know clearly that the legacies of Empire, which continue white hegemony, patriarchy, heterosexuality, normalized cisgender identities, the class war, colonial debts, Western epistemology, and ecological extraction, must be overcome and replaced by a transnational solidarity of resistance and reimagination.
In recent years drag performance has moved from the fringes to emerge as a mainstream phenomenon, showcased on TV shows in the US and the UK. This collection offers a diverse range of critical engagements by drag performers, makers, scholars and writers reflecting on work from the UK, USA, Israel, Germany and Australia. Moving beyond discussions of gender theory, the essays consider contemporary drag performance practices, connecting them to the histories, communities and politics that produced them. Chapters range across discussions of drag kings in the US, UK and drag and activism; the influence of RuPaul on the generation of new forms of work in New York; transfeminist critiques of drag; 'bio'/faux queens; engagements with race and ethnicity through drag performance; drag andragogy; audience concerns; drag intersections with animal personas, and how drag performance relates to personal narratives of history and identity. Collectively the contributions focus on drag as a mode of performance that is diverse and that uncorsets the easy thought that drag is simply a cross dressing man in a dress or a woman in a suit.
This book is the first study of multilateral LGBT human rights diplomacy viewed from the perspective of its practitioners: diplomats, LGBT activists, human rights experts and multilateral specialists. It demonstrates how diplomats and advocates work to promote LGBT rights on the world stage, often using Western constructs of sexual and gender identity. In turn, these efforts have triggered conflict and polarization: opposing states often deploy cultural, religious and moral discourses to minimize LGBT rights as a “legitimate” human right. The author, a seasoned Canadian foreign service officer, human rights negotiator and former community activist and researcher, uses insider perspectives to critically assess both bilateral and multilateral diplomatic engagement on LGBT human rights issues. Janoff’s research involved participation in UN meetings in Geneva and New York and 29 interviews with diplomats, human rights advocates and experts, and representatives from the UN and other inter-governmental organizations. Although LGBT issues have been mainstreamed into many areas of bilateral and multilateral human rights policy, his research found a considerable gap: a coordinated diplomatic and civil society approach is needed to more effectively address ongoing human rights violations against LGBT people around the world.
This volume provides a diverse, eclectic, and paradoxically mature approach to theorizing and demonstrates how the development of theory is crucial to the future of family research.".