In day-to-day life, people often act as if they know exactly what they mean by boys and girls, masculine and feminine, butch and femme. Render Me, Gender Me challenges comfortable assumptions about gender by weaving Kath Weston's own thought-provoking commentary together with the voices of lesbians from a variety of race and class backgrounds.
In Telling Stories, Mary Jo Maynes, Jennifer L. Pierce, and Barbara Laslett argue that personal narratives-autobiographies, oral histories, life history interviews, and memoirs-are an important research tool for understanding the relationship between people and their societies. Gathering examples from throughout the world and from premodern as well as contemporary cultures, they draw from labor history and class analysis, feminist sociology, race relations, and anthropology to demonstrate the value of personal narratives for scholars and students alike. Telling Stories explores why and how personal narratives should be used as evidence, and the methods and pitfalls of their use. The authors stress the importance of recognizing that stories that people tell about their lives are never simply individual. Rather, they are told in historically specific times and settings and call on rules, models, and social experiences that govern how story elements link together in the process of self-narration. Stories show how individuals' motivations, emotions, and imaginations have been shaped by their cumulative life experiences. In turn, Telling Stories demonstrates how the knowledge produced by personal narrative analysis is not simply contained in the stories told; the understanding that takes place between narrator and analyst and between analyst and audience enriches the results immeasurably.
After decades of innovative scholarship that galvanized a field and shattered a world of preconceptions, the study of gender now appears to languish. It has been a long while since the publication of a provocative and influential text like Judith Butler's Gender Trouble . Kath Weston argues that the problem is one of time. For too long gender studies has been preoccupied with the visual, with ample attention given to issues of performativity and embodiment, all at the expense of time. Gender in Real Time makes a provocative and important new argument that will revolutionize the field of gender studies. Introducing temporality into the equation and examining the ways gender exists, Weston uses the tools of political economy, the history of mathematics, Darwinian evolution, and a bit of physics to propel gender studies toward the future. Startling new concepts like zero gender and the meaning of time claims are introduced. Moreover, the impact of our time-sensitive society, with its ever-increasing need for speed and accelerated development, is explored for its effect on the production of gender. With chapter titles including, Unsexed, The Ghosts of Gender Past, and The Global Economy Next Time, this book offers a pioneering addition to the field that will forever change our notion of gender.
What is life? What is water? What is sound? In Sounding the Limits of Life, anthropologist Stefan Helmreich investigates how contemporary scientists—biologists, oceanographers, and audio engineers—are redefining these crucial concepts. Life, water, and sound are phenomena at once empirical and abstract, material and formal, scientific and social. In the age of synthetic biology, rising sea levels, and new technologies of listening, these phenomena stretch toward their conceptual snapping points, breaching the boundaries between the natural, cultural, and virtual. Through examinations of the computational life sciences, marine biology, astrobiology, acoustics, and more, Helmreich follows scientists to the limits of these categories. Along the way, he offers critical accounts of such other-than-human entities as digital life forms, microbes, coral reefs, whales, seawater, extraterrestrials, tsunamis, seashells, and bionic cochlea. He develops a new notion of "sounding"—as investigating, fathoming, listening—to describe the form of inquiry appropriate for tracking meanings and practices of the biological, aquatic, and sonic in a time of global change and climate crisis. Sounding the Limits of Life shows that life, water, and sound no longer mean what they once did, and that what count as their essential natures are under dynamic revision.
The authors are proud sponsors of the 2020 SAGE Keith Roberts Teaching Innovations Award—enabling graduate students and early career faculty to attend the annual ASA pre-conference teaching and learning workshop. The Kaleidoscope of Gender: Prisms, Patterns, and Possibilities provides an accessible, timely, and stimulating overview of the cutting-edge literature and theoretical frameworks in sociology and related fields in order to understand the social construction of gender. The kaleidoscope metaphor and its three themes—prisms, patterns, and possibilities—unify topic areas throughout the book. By focusing on the prisms through which gender is shaped, the patterns which gender takes, and the possibilities for social change, the reader gains a deeper understanding of ourselves and our relationships with others, both locally and globally. Editors Catherine Valentine, Mary Nell Trautner, and the work of Joan Spade, focus on the paradigms and approaches to gender studies that are constantly changing and evolving. The Sixth Edition includes incorporation of increased emphasis on global perspectives, updated contemporary social movements, such as #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo, and an updated focus on gendered violence. Free online resources are available at The SAGE Gender and Sexuality Resource Center. This site is intended to provide you with an array of multimedia resources to enhance your studies of gender and sexuality.
Lambda Literary Award for Best Book in Transgender Nonfiction, 2013 If feminist studies and transgender studies are so intimately connected, why are they not more deeply integrated? Offering multidisciplinary models for this assimilation, the vibrant essays in Transfeminist Perspectives in and beyond Transgender and Gender Studies suggest timely and necessary changes for institutions of higher learning. Responding to the more visible presence of transgender persons as well as gender theories, the contributing essayists focus on how gender is practiced in academia, health care, social services, and even national border patrols. Working from the premise that transgender is both material and cultural, the contributors address such aspects of the university as administration, sports, curriculum, pedagogy, and the appropriate location for transgender studies. Combining feminist theory, transgender studies, and activism centered on social diversity and justice, these essays examine how institutions as lived contexts shape everyday life.
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.
A rich heritage that needs to be documented 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 endeavors. It covers a long history and a dynamic and ever changing present, while opening up the academic profession to new scholarship and new ways of thinking. A groundbreaking new approach 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 for and by a wide range of people Intended as a reference for students and scholars in all fields, as well as for the general public, the encyclopedia is written in user-friendly language. At the same time it maintains a high level of scholarship that incorporates both passion and objectivity. It is written by some of the most famous names in the field, as well as new scholars, whose research continues to advance gender studies into the future.
This groundbreaking collection includes thirteen essays from historians, sociologists, and anthropologists who discuss transgendered females and same-sex desire among women in Asia, Latin America, Native North America, and Africa. Offering compelling evidence against the commonly accepted notion that non-Western women are generally passive victims of male domination and compulsory heterosexuality, these essays on lesbian desire in ancient and modern India, butch-femme social types in Indonesia and Peru, and the lesbian movement in Mexico dispel the myth that same-sex female desire is rooted in Western neo-imperialist culture.
Over time, male homosexuality and effeminacy have become indelibly associated, sometimes even synonymous. In Faeries, Bears, and Leathermen, Peter Hennen contends that this stigma of effeminacy exerts a powerful influence on gay subcultures. Through a comparative ethnographic analysis of three communities, Hennen explores the surprising ways that conventional masculinity is being collectively challenged, subverted, or perpetuated in contemporary gay male culture. Hennen’s colorful study focuses on a trio of groups: the Radical Faeries, who parody effeminacy by playfully embracing it, donning prom dresses and glitter; the Bears, who strive to appear like “regular guys” and celebrate their larger, hairier bodies; and the Leathermen, who emulate hypermasculine biker culture, simultaneously paying homage to and undermining notions of manliness. Along with a historical analysis of the association between effeminacy and homosexuality, Hennen examines how this connection affects the groups’ sexual practices. Ultimately, he argues, while all three groups adopt innovative approaches to gender issues and sexual pleasure, masculine norms continue to constrain members of each community.
