Table of Contents

I. HISTORY
1. Before Identity: The Ancient World through the Nineteenth Century
2. Sexology: Constructing the Modern Homosexual
3. Toward Liberation
4. Stonewall and Beyond
II. POLITICS
5. Nature, Nurture, and Identity
6. Inclusion and Equality
7. Queer Diversities
8. Intersectionalities
III. LITERATURE AND THE ARTS
9. Homo-sexed Art and Literature
10. Lesbian Pulp Novels and Gay Physique Pictorials
11. Queer Transgressions
12. Censorship and Moral Panic
IV. MEDIA
13. Film and Television
14. Queers and the Internet
15. The Politics of Location: Alternative Media and the Search for Queer Space

About the Author

Michelle A. Gibson is Professor Emerita of the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati. Her scholarship focuses on Sexuality Studies and pedagogy. Her most recent writing applies queer and postmodern identity theories to pedagogical practice and popular culture. With Jonathan Alexander she edited QP: Queer Poetry, an online poetry journal, and she and Alexander also edited a strain of JAC: Journal of Advanced Composition titled “Queer Composition(s).” With Deborah Meem she coedited Femme/Butch: New Considerations of the Way We Want to Go (2002) and Lesbian Academic Couples (2005).

Jonathan Alexander is Chancellor’s Professor of English and Gender & Sexuality Studies at the University of California, Irvine. He is author, co-author, or editor of twenty-one books, including several works of queer creative nonfiction, including Stroke Book: The Diary of a Blind Spot (Fordham, 2021) and the “Creep” Trilogy, consisting of Creep: A Life, a Theory, an Apology (punctum, 2017), Bullied: The Story of an Abuse (punctum, 2021), and Dear Queer Self: An Experiment in Memoir (Acre Books, 2022).  He is also published extensively in LGBT and sexuality studies, including the books: The Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetorics (co-edited with Jacqueline Rhodes, 2021), Sexual Rhetorics: Methods, Identities, Publics (co-edited with Jacqueline Rhodes, Routledge, 2015); Techne: Queer Meditations on Writing the Self (co-authored with Jacqueline Rhodes, Computers and Composition Digital Press, 2015); Bisexuality and Queer Theory: Intersections, Connections and Challenges (co-edited with Serena Anderlini D’Onofrio, Routledge, 2012); Literacy, Sexuality, Pedagogy: Theory and Practice (Utah State, 2008); and Bisexuality and Transgenderism: InterSEXions of the Others (co-edited with Karen Yescavage, Routledge, 2004).

Deborah T. Meem is Professor Emerita of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati. Her academic specialties are Victorian literature, LGBTQ Studies, and the 19th-century woman’s novel. She earned a PhD from Stony Brook University in 1985. Her work has appeared in Journal of the History of Sexuality, Feminist Teacher, Studies in Popular Culture, and elsewhere. She has edited four works by Victorian novelist and journalist Eliza Lynn Linton: The Rebel of the Family (Broadview, 2002), Realities (Valancourt, 2010), The Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland (Victorian Secrets, 2011), and Sowing the Wind (Victorian Secrets, 2015). With Michelle Gibson she coedited Femme/Butch: New Considerations of the Way We Want to Go (2002) and Lesbian Academic Couples (2005), both published by Routledge Press. With Jonathan Alexander she wrote “Dorian Gray, Tom Ripley, and the Queer Closet” (CLCWeb, 2003)

Reviews

“I am most impressed by this book’s blend of comprehensive scope with approachable, intelligent presentation. It provides material valuable for both students new to the field and those taking more advanced courses without excluding either group on the basis of approach or diction . . . I just love this book!”
*Sarah-Hope Parmeter*

“This text will give me a way to teach LGBT issues as central—that is, NOT as tangents, add-ons, or side issues, but as a central area of inquiry . . . This text is by far the best thing I have seen, and it is head and shoulders above any other possibilities.”
*Mary Armstrong*