An enlightening, entertaining look at what the term lesbian really meansand what it means to be a lesbian Twenty-First Century Lesbian Studies focuses on the field’s institutionalization into the humanities and social sciences, examining how the term lesbian is used in activist, community, and cultural contexts, and how its use impacts the lives of women who have chosen it as an identity. The book’s contributors include many of the world’s foremost experts in lesbian studies, as well as scholars whose primary research is in bisexuality, transsexuality and transgender, intersex, and queer theory. The innovative essays touch on five individual themesGenealogies, Readings, Theories, Identities, and Locationsas they explore the past, present, and future of lesbian studies. Twenty-First Century Lesbian Studies places the term lesbian at the center of analysis, whether as a concept, a category, an identity, a political position, or an object choice. The book’s cutting-edge essays examine the various meanings of lesbian; the risks taken by women who live and/or act, write, and speak as lesbians; current genealogical myths; and the lives, studies, and activism of lesbians who represent a range of geographical and historical contexts. The book presents research produced outside the United States/United Kingdom, two places which tend to dominate the field, and essays that focus on areas, such as medieval studies, that are often ignored in theoretical discussions. Twenty-First Century Lesbian Studies considers these questions: does the term lesbian still have relevance as an identity descriptor or political position? who does lesbian include and/or exclude? how does intersectional thinking impact the way we formulate lesbian identities? are we now post-lesbian? what, if anything, defines the field of lesbian studies? what is the current state of the field? what is the possible future of the field? what current topics should be most important to practitioners? how is work that falls under the lesbian studies umbrella connected to efforts in the areas of feminism, LGBT, intersex, and queer straight studies? and many more Twenty-First Century Lesbian Studies is an enlightening, entertaining, and essential read for academics and students working in all disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, and for the lesbian/queer population, in general.

The best and most up-to-date scholarship and theory in lesbian studies since the first edition in 1982: "Lesbian studies" considers the history, present, and future of the field, challenging the limits of lesbian studies.

Queer Studies is designed as an advanced undergraduate textbook in queer studies for this rapidly growing field. It is also appropriate as a required or recommended graduate textbook. The author uses the overarching concept of queering as a way of looking at the lives of queer people across a range of disciplines.

Queering Gay and Lesbian Studies is a broadly interdisciplinary study that considers a key dilemma in gay and lesbian studies through the prism of identity and its discontents: the field studies has modeled itself on ethnic studies programs, perhaps to be intelligible to the university community, but certainly because the ethnic studies route to programs is well established. Since this model requires a stable and identifiable community, gay and lesbian studies have emphasized stable and knowable identities. The problem, of course is that sexuality is neither stable, tidy, nor developmental. With the advent of queer theory, there are now other perspectives available that frequently find themselves at odds with traditional gay and lesbian studies. In this pioneering new study, Thomas Piontek provides a critical analysis of the development of gay and lesbian studies alongside the development of queer theory, the disputes between them, and criticism of their activities from both in and outside of the gay academic community. Examining disputes about transgendering, gay male promiscuity, popular culture, gay history, political activism, and non-normative sexual practices, Piontek argues that it is vital to queer gay and lesbian studies--opening this emerging discipline to queer critical interventions without, however, further institutionalizing queer theory.

This interdisciplinary volume of thirty original essays engages with four key concerns of queer theoretical work - identity, discourse, normativity and relationality. The terms ’queer’ and ’theory’ are put under interrogation by a combination of distinguished and emerging scholars from a wide range of international locations, in an effort to map the relations and disjunctions between them. These contributors are especially attendant to the many theoretical discourses intersecting with queer theory, including feminist theory, LGBT studies, postcolonial theory, psychoanalysis, disability studies, Marxism, poststructuralism, critical race studies and posthumanism, to name a few. This Companion provides an up to the minute snapshot of queer scholarship from the past two decades and identifies many current directions queer theorizing is taking, while also signposting several fruitful avenues for future research. This book is both an invaluable and authoritative resource for scholars and an indispensable teaching tool for use in the classroom.

Lesbian Subjects gathers essays - primarily from feminist studies between 1980 and 1993 - and traces lesbian studies from its beginnings, examining the difficulties of defining a lesbian perspective and a lesbian past - a culture, social milieux, and states of mind.

A pioneer of modern motherhood studies, Andrea O'Reilly explores motherhood's current representation and practice, considering developments that were unimaginable decades ago: the Internet, interracial surrogacy, raising transchildren, male mothering, intensive mothering, queer parenting, the applications of new biotechnologies, and mothering in the post-9/11 era. Her work pulls together a range of disciplines and themes in motherhood studies. She confronts the effects of globalization, HIV/AIDS, welfare reform, politicians as mothers, third wave feminism, and the evolving motherhood movement, and she incorporates Chicana, African-American, Canadian, Muslim, queer, low-income, trans, and lesbian perspectives.

This Major Reference series brings together a wide range of key international articles in law and legal theory. Many of these essays are not readily accessible, and their presentation in these volumes will provide a vital new resource for both research and teaching. Each volume is edited by leading international authorities who explain the significance and context of articles in an informative and complete introduction.

This collection of essays explores the shifting definitions of the terms lesbian and postmodern, the lesbian in contemporary fiction and Hollywood film, and the pitfalls and rewards of the recent lesbian theory.

The unprecedented increase in lesbian representation over the past two decades has, paradoxically, coincided with queer theory's radical transformation of the study of sexuality. In Lesbian Cinema after Queer Theory, Clara Bradbury-Rance argues that this contradictory context has yielded new kinds of cinematic language through which to give desire visual form. By offering close readings of key contemporary films such as Blue Is the Warmest Colour, Water Lilies and Carol alongside a broader filmography encompassing over 300 other films released between 1927 and 2018, the book provokes new ways of understanding a changing field of representation. Bradbury-Rance resists charting a narrative of representational progress or shoring up the lesbian's categorisation in the newly available terms of the visible. Instead, she argues for a feminist framework that can understand lesbianism's queerness. Drawing on a provocative theoretical and visual corpus, Lesbian Cinema after Queer Theory reveals the conditions of lesbian legibility in the twenty-first century.