Art Essay Humanities Nonfiction Social Sciences Theory

Porous Cells

“I use my most recent film, Thick Relations, to argue that traditional narrative structures are by definition oppressive and controlling. Traditional narratives demand a straight progress through time, through life, through love, through sexuality and conflict and family—a straight progress that would have us believe in and desirous of state-sanctioned institutions and relations. Queer lives…

Art Biography Essay History Humanities Law/Legal Nonfiction Social Sciences Theory

Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World from the Tweets to the Streets

In Reclaiming Our Space, social worker, activist, and cultural commentator Feminista Jones explores how Black women are changing culture, society, and the landscape of feminism by building digital communities and using social media as powerful platforms. As Jones reveals, some of the best-loved devices of our shared social media language are a result of Black…

Art Critique Essay Nonfiction Social Sciences

Saving space: strategies of space reclamation at early women’s film festivals and queer film festivals today

LGBT/queer film festivals provide counter-public spaces for marginalised subjects to formulate community, negotiate identity and rally under political banners. At the same time, screening work by LGBT* filmmakers interpellates spectators into a common subject position and locates discursively ‘homeless’ subjects in space and time. The creation of queer, urban, community space is particularly vital in…

Anthology Art Biography Critique Essay History Humanities Law/Legal Nonfiction Social Sciences Theory

The Cambridge Companion to Queer Studies (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

This Companion provides a guide to queer inquiry in literary and cultural studies. The essays represent new and emerging areas, including transgender studies, indigenous studies, disability studies, queer of color critique, performance studies, and studies of digital culture. Rather than being organized around a set of literary texts defined by a particular theme, literary movement,…

Art Essay Humanities Nonfiction Social Sciences Theory

Writing the Body, a Review of Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics

How do trans and genderqueer poets write the body onto and against the page?What expressions and forms—even if amorphous ones—does the body use and take in its poetic becomings? Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (2013), edited by TC Tolbert and Tim Trace Peterson, is a collection that grapples with these questions…

Art Critique Essay Humanities Nonfiction Social Sciences Theory

Tumbling Into Queer Utopias and Vortexes: Experiences of LGBTQ Social Media Users on Tumblr

Drawing on one year of fieldwork with LGBTQ youth, I explore the ways Tumblr, a microblogging and social networking site, has become a vibrant center of queer discourse and collectivity. I argue that for LGBTQ users, Tumblr simultaneously generates the specter of a “queer utopia”—a space where queer potential flourishes and more expansive ways to…

Art Essay History Humanities Nonfiction Theory

Genders and Sexualities in Indonesian Cinema: Constructing Gay, Lesbi and Waria Identities on Screen

Indonesia has a long and rich tradition of homosexual and transgender cultures, and the past 40 years in particular has seen an increased visibility of sexual minorities in the country, which has been reflected through film and popular culture. This book examines how representations of gay, lesbian and transgender individuals and communities have developed in…

Art Critique Essay History Humanities Nonfiction Social Sciences Theory

Marginal Bodies, Trans Utopias

Although over the last two decades there has been a proliferation of gender studies, transgender has largely remained institutionalised as an ‘umbrella term’ that encapsulates all forms of gender understandings differing from what are thought to be gender norms. In both theoretical and medical literature, trans identity has been framed within a paradigm of awkwardness…