For when Jeanette Winterson looks at works as diverse as the Mona Lisa and Virginia Woolf's The Waves, she frees them from layers of preconception and restores their power to exalt and unnerve, shock and transform us."Art Objects is a book to be admired for its effort to speak exorbitantly, urgently and sometimes beautifully about art and about our individual and collective need for serious art."--Los Angeles Times

    She guides us through the ruins and construction sites of post-communist cities--St. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin, and Prague--and the imagined homelands of exiles-Benjamin, Nabokov, Mandelstahm, and Brodsky. From Jurassic Park to the Totalitarian Sculpture Garden, Boym unravels the threads of this global epidemic of longing and its antidotes.

    Initiating and describing a theory and method of reading the metaphors and materiality of "the wake," "the ship," "the hold," and "the weather," Sharpe shows how the sign of the slave ship marks and haunts contemporary Black life in the diaspora and how the specter of the hold produces conditions of containment, regulation, and punishment, but also something in excess of them. In the weather, Sharpe situates anti-Blackness and white supremacy as the total climate that produces premature Black death as normative. Formulating the wake and "wake work" as sites of artistic production, resistance, consciousness, and possibility for living in diaspora, In the Wake offers a way forward.

    --Hanoi to Hoboken: a round trip ticket --Living with other women --Take a lesbian to lunch --The last straw --The shape of things to come --Roxanne Dunbar --Gossip --Leadership vs. stardom --The last picture show --A manifesto for the feminist artist --Love song for feminists from Flamingo Park --I am a woman --The good fairy --It's all Dixie cups to me --The lady's not for burning.

    Inspired by activist and writer Rebecca Walker, they speak out, challenging many of their own assumptions about the women's movement and demanding that readers recognize a new relationship between the personal and the political.Black and white, male and female, gay and straight, they fearlessly describe their liberation from the feminist ideals that conflict with the reality of who they are, expose shocking secrets, and acknowledge long-hidden accommodations and anomalies.

    A comical memoir about a klutz's sex change, Bumbling into Body Hair shows how a sense of humor - and true love - can triumph over hair disasters, resurrected breasts, and even the most crippling self-doubt.

    Despite making up less than 1% of the country's population, they are the subjects of a toxic and increasingly polarised 'debate', which generates reliable controversy for newspapers and talk shows. This media frenzy conceals a simple fact: that we are having the wrong conversation, a conversation in which trans people themselves are reduced to a talking point and denied a meaningful voice.In this powerful new book, Shon Faye reclaims the idea of the 'transgender issue' to uncover the reality of what it means to be trans in a transphobic society. In doing so, she provides a compelling, wide-ranging analysis of trans lives from youth to old age, exploring work, family, housing, healthcare, the prison system, and trans participation in the LGBTQ+ and feminist communities, in contemporary Britain and beyond.The Transgender Issue is a landmark work that signals the beginning of a new, healthier conversation about trans life. It is a manifesto for change, and a call for justice and solidarity between all marginalised people and minorities. Trans liberation, as Faye sees it, goes to the root of what our society is and what it could be; it offers the possibility of a more just, free and joyful world for all of us.

    Modeled after popular bird spotters’ guides, Straight People is an affectionate and humorous guide to the varied species and subspecies of the sexual majority: the heterosexual. In this hilarious and easy-to-use field guide, actor and author Jeffery Self compiles everything you’ve ever wanted to know about heteros including their nesting behavior, feeding and mating habits, migration patterns, key identification features, and more. Complemented with fun two-color illustrations, interactive charts, graphs, and quizzes throughout, Straight People is sure entertain readers for all walks of life.

    There is no other guide like this; a user-friendly and enticing entry into the marvelously enjoyable world of Proust.At seven volumes, three thousand pages, and more than four hundred characters, as well as a towering reputation as a literary classic, Proust's novel can seem daunting. But though begun a century ago, in 1909, it is in fact as engaging and relevant to our times as ever. Patrick Alexander is passionate about Proust's genius and appeal--he calls the work "outrageously bawdy and extremely funny"--and in his guide he makes it more accessible to the general reader through detailed plot summaries, historical and cultural background, a guide to the fifty most important characters, maps, family trees, illustrations, and a brief biography of Proust. Essential for readers and book groups currently reading Proust and who want help keeping track of the huge cast and intricate plot, this Reader's Guide is also a wonderful introduction for students and new readers and a memory-refresher for long-time fans.

    The historical breadth of Boswell's research (from the Greeks to Aquinas) and the variety of sources consulted (legal, literary, theological, artistic, and scientific) make this one of the most extensive treatments of any single aspect of Western social history. The product of ten years of research and analysis of records in a dozen languages, this book opens up a new area of historical inquiry and helps elucidate the origins and operations of intolerance as a social force.

    1960s comic book creators, anticipating Fiedler, began to morph American superheroes from icons of nationalism and white masculinity into actual mutant outcasts, defined by their genetic difference from ordinary humanity. These powerful misfits and "freaks" soon came to embody the social and political aspirations of America's most marginalized groups, including women, racial and sexual minorities, and the working classes.In The New Mutants, Ramzi Fawaz draws upon queer theory to tell the story of these monstrous fantasy figures and how they grapple with radical politics from Civil Rights and The New Left to Women's and Gay Liberation Movements. Through a series of comic book case studies - including The Justice League of America, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, and The New Mutants -alongside late 20th century fan writing, cultural criticism, and political documents, Fawaz reveals how the American superhero modeled new forms of social belonging that counterculture youth would embrace in the 1960s and after. The New Mutants provides the first full-length study to consider the relationship between comic book fantasy and radical politics in the modern United States.

    Here Girard explores violence as it is represented and occurs throughout history, literature and myth. Girard's forceful and thought-provoking analyses of Biblical narrative, Greek tragedy and the lynchings and pogroms propagated by contemporary states illustrate his central argument that violence belongs to everyone and is at the heart of the sacred.

    Oliver's poems begin in the small everyday moments familiar to all dog lovers, but through her extraordinary vision these observations become higher meditations on the world and our place in it.Dog Songs includes visits with old friends, like Oliver's beloved Percy, and introduces still others in poems of love and laughter, heartbreak and grief. Throughout, the many dogs of Oliver's life emerge as fellow travelers and guides, uniquely able to open our eyes to the lessons of the moment and the joys of nature and connection.

    Surpassing the Love of Men throws a new light on shifting theories of female sexuality and the changing status of women over the centuries.

    Diamond argues that for some women love and desire are not rigidly heterosexual or homosexual, but fluid, changing as women move through the stages of life, various social groups and, most importantly, different love relationships.