"Gender and Sexuality in Popular Culture" features a unique collection of seminal and path-breaking scholarly articles in cultural studies and gender and sexuality studies. Each article is accompanied by a concise introduction that distills key concepts and critical vocabulary. Popular culture genres surveyed include romance novels, animated films, reality television, pornography, advertising, and beauty magazines. Students are given the theoretical tools to engage popular media as dynamic sites of cultural struggle and knowledge production. Discussion questions at the conclusion of each article promote comprehension of difficult ideas and prepare students for classroom conversations. The textbook serves as a valuable learning tool for courses in media and communication studies, cultural studies, women s and LGBT studies, and composition courses organized thematically around popular culture. Benjamin Bateman received his Ph.D. in English from The University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is currently Assistant Professor of English and Director of the Center for the Study of Genders and Sexualities in the College of Arts and Letters at California State University, Los Angeles. His areas of expertise include queer studies, popular culture, literary theory, and modern and contemporary British and American fiction. He resides in Pasadena, California.

An inclusive and accessible resource on the interdisciplinary study of gender and sexuality Companion to Sexuality Studies explores the significant theories, concepts, themes, events, and debates of the interdisciplinary study of sexuality in a broad range of cultural, social, and political contexts. Bringing together essays by an international team of experts from diverse academic backgrounds, this comprehensive volume provides original insights and fresh perspectives on the history and institutional regulatory processes that socially construct sex and sexuality and examines the movements for social justice that advance sexual citizenship and reproductive rights. Detailed yet accessible chapters explore the intersection of sexuality studies and fields such as science, health, psychology, economics, environmental studies, and social movements over different periods of time and in different social and national contexts. Divided into five parts, the Companion first discusses the theoretical and methodological diversity of sexuality studies.Subsequent chapters address the fields of health, science and psychology, religion, education and the economy. They also include attention to sexuality as constructed in popular culture, as well as global activism, sexual citizenship, policy, and law. An essential overview and an important addition to scholarship in the field, this book: Draws on international, postcolonial, intersectional, and interdisciplinary insights from scholars working on sexuality studies around the world Provides a comprehensive overview of the field of sexuality studies Offers a diverse range of topics, themes, and perspectives from leading authorities Focuses on the study of sexuality from the late nineteenth century to the present Includes an overview of the history and academic institutionalization of sexuality studies The Companion to Sexuality Studies is an indispensable resource for scholars, researchers, instructors, and students in gender, sexuality, and feminist studies, interdisciplinary programs in cultural studies, international studies, and human rights, as well as disciplines such as anthropology, psychology, history, education, human geography, political science, and sociology.

Gender & Pop Culture provides a foundation for the study of gender, pop culture and media. This comprehensive, interdisciplinary text provides text-book style introductory and concluding chapters written by the editors, seven original contributor chapters on key topics and written in a variety of writing styles, discussion questions, additional resources and more. Coverage includes: - Foundations for studying gender & pop culture (history, theory, methods, key concepts) - Contributor chapters on media and children, advertising, music, television, film, sports, and technology - Ideas for activism and putting this book to use beyond the classroom - Pedagogical Features - Suggestions for further readings on topics covered and international studies of gender and pop culture Gender & Pop Culture was designed with students in mind, to promote reflection and lively discussion. With features found in both textbooks and anthologies, this sleek book can serve as primary or supplemental reading in undergraduate courses across the disciplines that deal with gender, pop culture or media studies. “An important addition to the fields of gender and media studies, this excellent compilation will be useful to students and teachers in a wide range of disciplines. The research is solid, the examples from popular culture are current and interesting, and the conclusions are original and illuminating. It is certain to stimulate self-reflection and lively discussion.” Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D., author, feminist activist and creator of the Killing Us Softly:Advertising’s Image of Women film series “An ideal teaching tool: the introduction is intellectually robust and orients the reader towards a productive engagement with the chapters; the contributions themselves are diverse and broad in terms of the subject matter covered; and the conclusion helps students take what they have learnt beyond the classroom. I can’t wait to make use of it.” Sut Jhally, Professor of Communication, University of Massachusetts at Amherst,Founder & Executive Director, Media Education Foundation Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, Ph.D. is currently an assistant professor of sociology at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. Her first book, Sing Us a Song, Piano Woman: Female Fans and the Music of Tori Amos (Scarecrow, 2013) addresses the ways women use music to heal after experiencing trauma. www.adriennetrier-bieniek.com Patricia Leavy, Ph.D. is an internationally known scholar and best-selling author, formerly associate professor of sociology and the founding director of gender studies at Stonehill College. She is the author of the acclaimed novels American Circumstance and Low-Fat Love and has published a dozen nonfiction books including Method Meets Art: Arts-Based Research Practice. www.patricialeavy.com

An overview of popular literature from the early nineteenth century to the present day from a historical and comparative perspective.

This book steers black sexual politics toward a more sex-positive trajectory, navigating the uncharted spaces where social constructionism, third-wave feminism, and black popular culture collide to locate a new site for sexuality studies that is theoretically innovative, politically subversive, and stylistically chic.

In this thoughtful and highly readable book, Noël Sturgeon illustrates the myriad and insidious ways in which American popular culture depicts social inequities as “natural” and how our images of “nature” interfere with creating solutions to environmental problems that are just and fair for all. Why is it, she wonders, that environmentalist messages in popular culture so often “naturalize” themes of heroic male violence, suburban nuclear family structures, and U.S. dominance in the world? And what do these patterns of thought mean for how we envision environmental solutions, like “green” businesses, recycling programs, and the protection of threatened species? Although there are other books that examine questions of culture and environment, this is the first book to employ a global feminist environmental justice analysis to focus on how racial inequality, gendered patterns of work, and heteronormative ideas about the family relate to environmental questions. Beginning in the late 1980s and moving to the present day, Sturgeon unpacks a variety of cultural tropes, including ideas about Mother Nature, the purity of the natural, and the allegedly close relationships of indigenous people with the natural world. She investigates the persistence of the “myth of the frontier” and its extension to the frontier of space exploration. She ponders the popularity (and occasional controversy) of penguins (and penguin family values) and questions assumptions about human warfare as “natural.” The book is intended to provoke debates—among college students and graduate students, among their professors, among environmental activists, and among all citizens who are concerned with issues of environmental quality and social equality.

DIVA visual history about how feminist artists have appropriated and incorporated the signification of the pin-up genre within their own work./div

Working Girls investigates the thematic concerns of contemporary Hollywood cinema, and its ambivalent articulation of women as both active, and defined by sexual performance, asking whether new Hollywood cinema has responded to feminism and contemporary sexual identities. Whether analysing the rise of films centred around female friendships, or the entrance of pop stars such as Whitney Houston and Madonna into film, Working Girls is an authoritative investigation of the presence of women both as film makers and actors in contemporary mainstream cinema.

The representation of gender and sexuality is well-explored territory in film studies. In Film Bodies, Katharina Lindner takes existing debates into a new direction and integrates queer and feminist theory with film phenomenology. Drawing on a broad range of sources, Lindner explores the female body's presence in a range of genres including the dance film, the sports film and queer cinema. Moving across mainstream and independent cinema, Lindner provides detailed 'textural' analyses of Black Swan, The Tango Lesson, 2 Seconds, Offside, Tomboy and Girlhood and discusses the queer feminist encounters these films can give rise to. This provocative book is of vital interest to students and researchers of queer cinema, queer/feminist theory, embodiment and affect and offers a unique new way of understanding the relationship between queerness, feminism, the body and cinema.

In globalizing Asia, sexual mores and gender roles are in constant flux. How have economic shifts and social changes altered and reconfigured the cultural meanings of gender and sexuality in the region? How have the changing political economy and social milieu influenced and shaped the inner workings and micro-politics of family structure, gender relationships, intimate romance, transactional sex, and sexual behaviors? This volume offers up-to-date, grounded, critical analysis of the complex intersections of gender, sexuality, and political economy across a diverse array of Asian societies: China, Japan, Cambodia, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Taiwan. Based on intense ethnographic fieldwork, the chapters disentangle the ways in which gendered and sexual experiences are impinged upon by state policies, economic realities, cultural ideologies, and social hierarchies. Whether highlighting intimate relationships between elite businessmen and their mistresses in China; nightclub performances by Thai men in Bangkok; single women’s views of romance, motherhood, and marriage in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tokyo; or male same-sex relationships in Pakistan—each chapter centers around the stories of the gendered subjects themselves and how they are shaped by outside forces. Taken together they provide a provocative entrée into the cultural politics of gender and sexuality in Asia. By foregrounding cross-cultural ethnographic research, this volume sheds light on how configurations of gender and sexuality are constituted, negotiated, contested, transformed, and at times, perpetuated and reproduced in private, intimate experiences. It will be of particular interest to students and scholars in anthropology, sociology, political science, and women’s and LGBTQ studies.