Book picks similar to
Quare Joyce by Joseph Valente


break-reading
fla-books
gender-and-sexuality
irish-lit-history

Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth


Elizabeth Grosz - 2008
    She approaches art as a form of erotic expression connecting sensory richness with primal desire, and in doing so, finds that the meaning of art comes from the intensities and sensations it inspires, not just its intention and aesthetic.By regarding our most cultured human accomplishments as the result of the excessive, nonfunctional forces of sexual attraction and seduction, Grosz encourages us to see art as a kind of bodily enhancement or mode of sensation enabling living bodies to experience and transform the universe. Art can be understood as a way for bodies to augment themselves and their capacity for perception and affection-a way to grow and evolve through sensation. Through this framework, which knits together the theories of Charles Darwin, Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze, F�lix Guattari, and Jakob von Uexk�ll, we are able to grasp art's deep animal lineage.Grosz argues that art is not tied to the predictable and known but to new futures not contained in the present. Its animal affiliations ensure that art is intensely political and charged with the creation of new worlds and new forms of living. According to Grosz, art is the way in which life experiments with materiality, or nature, in order to bring about change.

The Desert Smells Like Rain: A Naturalist in Papago Indian Country


Gary Paul Nabhan - 1982
    The Desert Smells Like Rain offers insights into the natural history of desert plants and animals as it documents a dying agricultural tradition that has enriched the biological diversity of the Papago's seemingly harsh environment. Drawing on his extensive scientific research and study of Papago folklore, as well as his years of work among the Desert People in village gardening and nutrition programs, Nabhan portrays a desert-adapted way of life that has persisted despite the pressures of modern civilization.

Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora


Martin F. Manalansan IV - 2003
    Insisting that gay identity is not teleological but fraught with fissures, Martin Manalansan IV describes how Filipino gay immigrants, like many queers of color, are creating alternative paths to queer modernity and citizenship. He makes a compelling argument for the significance of diaspora and immigration as sites for investigating the complexities of gender, race, and sexuality.Manalansan locates diasporic, transnational, and global dimensions of gay and other queer identities within a framework of quotidian struggles ranging from everyday domesticity to public engagements with racialized and gendered images to life-threatening situations involving AIDS. He reveals the gritty, mundane, and often contradictory deeds and utterances of Filipino gay men as key elements of queer globalization and transnationalism. Through careful and sensitive analysis of these men’s lives and rituals, he demonstrates that transnational gay identity is not merely a consumable product or lifestyle, but rather a pivotal element in the multiple, shifting relationships that queer immigrants of color mobilize as they confront the tribulations of a changing world.

The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality


Elizabeth A. Povinelli - 2006
    Povinelli reflects on a set of ethical and normative claims about the governance of love, sociality, and the body that circulates in liberal settler colonies such as the United States and Australia. She boldly theorizes intimate relations as pivotal sites where liberal logics and aspirations absorbed through settler imperialism are manifest, where discourses of self-sovereignty, social constraint, and value converge.For more than twenty years, Povinelli has traveled to the social worlds of indigenous men and women living at Belyuen, a small community in the Northern Territory of Australia. More recently she has moved across communities of alternative progressive queer movements in the United States, particularly those who identify as radical faeries. In this book she traces how liberal binary concepts of individual freedom and social constraint influence understandings of intimacy in these two worlds. At the same time, she describes alternative models of social relations within each group in order to highlight modes of intimacy that transcend a reductive choice between freedom and constraint.Shifting focus away from identities toward the social matrices out of which identities and divisions emerge, Povinelli offers a framework for thinking through such issues as what counts as sexuality and which forms of intimate social relations result in the distribution of rights, recognition, and resources, and which do not. In The Empire of Love Povinelli calls for, and begins to formulate, a politics of “thick life,” a way of representing social life nuanced enough to meet the density and variation of actual social worlds.

The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion


Leo Steinberg - 1983
    After centuries of repression and censorship, the sexual component in thousands of revered icons of Christ is restored to visibility. Steinberg's evidence resides in the imagery of the overtly sexed Christ, in Infancy and again after death. Steinberg argues that the artists regarded the deliberate exposure of Christ's genitalia as an affirmation of kinship with the human condition. Christ's lifelong virginity, understood as potency under check, and the first offer of blood in the circumcision, both required acknowledgment of the genital organ. More than exercises in realism, these unabashed images underscore the crucial theological import of the Incarnation. This revised and greatly expanded edition not only adduces new visual evidence, but deepens the theological argument and engages the controversy aroused by the book's first publication.

The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction


Justine Larbalestier - 2002
    Beginning in 1926, with the publication of the first issue of Amazing Stories, Justine Larbalestier examines science fiction's engagement with questions of femininity, masculinity, sex and sexuality. She traces the debates over the place of women and feminism in science fiction as it emerged in stories, letters and articles in science fiction magazines and fanzines. The book culminates in the story of James Tiptree, Jr. and the eponymous Award. Tiptree was a successful science fiction writer of the 1970s who was later discovered to be a woman. Tiptree's easy acceptance by the male-dominated publishing arena of the time proved that there was no necessary difference in the way men and women wrote, but that there was a real difference in the way they were read.

Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives


Cynthia Enloe - 2000
    They are also the employees of food companies, toy companies, clothing companies, film studios, stock brokerages, and advertising agencies. Militarization is never gender-neutral, Enloe claims: It is a personal and political transformation that relies on ideas about femininity and masculinity. Films that equate action with war, condoms that are designed with a camouflage pattern, fashions that celebrate brass buttons and epaulettes, tomato soup that contains pasta shaped like Star Wars weapons—all of these contribute to militaristic values that mold our culture in both war and peace.Presenting new and groundbreaking material that builds on Enloe's acclaimed work in Does Khaki Become You? and Bananas, Beaches, and Bases, Maneuvers takes an international look at the politics of masculinity, nationalism, and globalization. Enloe ranges widely from Japan to Korea, Serbia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Britain, Israel, the United States, and many points in between. She covers a broad variety of subjects: gays in the military, the history of "camp followers," the politics of women who have sexually serviced male soldiers, married life in the military, military nurses, and the recruitment of women into the military. One chapter titled "When Soldiers Rape" explores the many facets of the issue in countries such as Chile, the Philippines, Okinawa, Rwanda, and the United States.Enloe outlines the dilemmas feminists around the globe face in trying to craft theories and strategies that support militarized women, locally and internationally, without unwittingly being militarized themselves. She explores the complicated militarized experiences of women as prostitutes, as rape victims, as mothers, as wives, as nurses, and as feminist activists, and she uncovers the "maneuvers" that military officials and their civilian supporters have made in order to ensure that each of these groups of women feel special and separate.

Menopocalypse: How I Learned to Thrive During Menopause and How You Can Too


Amanda Thebe - 2020
    In her original, laugh-out-loud account, Thebe reveals the unique methods that have worked for her and her many clients. She also cuts through the thicket of information (and misinformation) about menopause to demystify hormone replacement therapy, hormone-related stress, weight gain, poor energy, lack of sleep, and more.Menopause isn’t fun, sexy, or cool, and a woman might spend one-third of her life in it—but that doesn’t mean we should suffer in silence. Let the outspoken, honest, and hilarious Amanda Thebe be your guide to surviving—and thriving—during menopocalypse. (Greystone Books)

Convict's Candy


Damon "Amin" Meadows - 2006
    Still having male organs, Candy is housed with strong, masculine, handsome male inmates who haven't been around or touched a woman in years. Candy soon finds herself being caught in several love affairs with men with families, girlfriends and wives at home--waiting for them to be released. But Candy doesn't kiss and tell; she understands the code of silence: what happens in prison stays in prison... . CONVICT'S CANDY deals with sexual identity, prostitution and homosexuality within the prison system, the interactions and relationships between the inmates and officers, infidelity and most importantly, explains how the HIV virus spreads rampantly within the prison. It also reveals how the dangerous and deadly disease is transmitted within society, when infected inmates are released to go home.

Sondheim & Co


Craig Zadan - 1974
    Written with the full co-operation of Sondheim himself, it examines each of Sondheim's masterpieces - including West Side Story, Gypsy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods - as well as the other Sondheim productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway, in repertory, as revivals, as opera, on film, and on television. this account is based on hundreds of hours of interviews with Sondheim and his associates.

Maker of Dune


Frank Herbert - 1985
    

The 52 Seductions


Betty Herbert - 2011
    If you loved Fifty Shades of Grey and Bared to You, you'll adore The 52 Seductions...

Gay Haiku


Joel Derfner - 2005
    A delicate balance of rhythm and line, the haiku has provided countless readers with an appreciation of the changing of the seasons and the miracles of nature. Now, in Gay Haiku, readers can finally appreciate more important things—like the changing of boyfriends and the miracles of shopping.Irresistible and irreverent, this collection of one hundred and ten witty and wicked short poems captures the many dating disasters of first-time author Joel Derfner. In a wonderfully fresh and original voice, Derfner shamelessly mines his personal life to send up such broad-ranging topics as gay pop culture, politics, family, sex, and, of course, home decorating.Gay, straight, or undecided, readers will delight in Derfner’s dry sense of humor and unmistakable charm as he tackles the big questions of life.

Tomboy Style: Beyond the Boundaries of Fashion


Lizzie Garrett Mettler - 2012
    They are bold, brazen, fierce—and sexy. They aren’t known for following rules, they are known for doing—and wearing—whatever they want. Tomboy captures the tomboy’s style, her je ne sais quoi, her wardrobe, and most importantly, her spirit. Throughout the twentieth century, the mass marketing of gender stereotypes meant tomboys cropped up against the odds, trends, and ads. As menswear-inspired fashions for women have exploded into the mainstream under the helm of designers and stylists ranging from J.Crew to Rag & Bone to Boy by Band of Outsiders, acceptance of both the word tomboy and the women associated with its edge has been set into play. But a tomboy is not just about style—tomboys are measured in equal parts wardrobe and spirit.A visual history that chronicles the past eighty years of women who blur the line between masculinity and femininity, Tomboy explores the evolution of the style and its icons. Vivid commentary illuminates the tomboy’s history and captures a diversity of women who are bound together by their inherent ability to seamlessly blend a rugged sensibility with classic, understated elegance.

Only Apparently Real/the World of Philip K. Dick


Paul S. Williams - 1986