Looking beyond the closet at the lives and works of renowned queer public figures

The expression »to come out of the closet« calls for an analysis of how language and notional as well as social spaces interact and intersect to constitute »queer«. This performative book, a product of artistic research, is an exploration of the proverbial closet through linguistics, queer, and postcolonial theory. It is a project in which opacity, minority, and improvisation happen on the levels of content, analysis, and typography. Eleven queer slangs from around the world become part of an exploration of queerness and knowledge from the Periphery through autoethnography, Édouard Glissant's concept of opacity, José Muñoz's disidentifications, and Gloria Anzaldúa's performative writing. Theory, personal accounts, and art are interwoven to offer an interdisciplinary reading of the slangs as queer methods of survival and resistance.

This is the first anthology to thematize the dramatic upward and downward shifts that have created the new social theory, and to present this new and exciting body of work in a thoroughly trans-disciplinary manner. In this revised second edition readers are provided with a much greater range of thinkers and perspectives, including new sections on such issues as imperialism, power, civilization clash, health and performance. The first section sets out the main schools of contemporary thought, from Habermas and Honneth on new critical theory, to Jameson and Hall on cultural studies, and Foucault and Bourdieu on poststructuralism. The sections that follow trace theory debates as they become more issues-based and engaged. They are: the post-foundational debates over morality, justice and epistemological truth the social meaning of nationalism, multiculturalism and globalization identity debates around gender, sexuality, race, the self and post-coloniality. This new edition provides more ample biographical and intellectual introductions to each thinker, and substantial introductions to each of the major sections. The editors introduce the volume with a newly revised, interpretive overview of social theory today. The New Social Theory Reader is an essential, reliable guide to current theoretical debates.

Closet Stages examines theater theory produced by middle- and upper-class British women-playwrights, actresses, and spectators-between 1790 and 1840. Shifting the focus away from the Romantic male writers to the journals, letters, and play prefaces in which women framed their relationship to the theater arts, Catherine Burroughs reveals how a concern with the performative aspects of daily life and the movement between public and private spheres produced a notion of theater that complicates the Romantic opposition between "closet" and "stage."

This book looks at contemporary surveillance practices and ideologies from a Christian theological perspective. Surveillance studies is an emerging, inter-disciplinary field that brings together scholars from sociology, criminology, political studies, computing and information studies, cultural studies and other disciplines. Although surveillance has been a feature of all societies since humans first co-operated to watch over one another whilst hunting and gathering it is the convergence of information technologies within both commerce and the state that has ushered in a 'surveillance society'. There has been little, if any, theological consideration of this important dimension of social organisation; this book fills the gap and offers a contribution to surveillance studies from a theological perspective, broadening the horizon against which surveillance might be interpreted and evaluated. This book is also an exercise in consciousness-raising with respect to the Christian community in order that they may critically engage with a surveillance society by drawing on biblical and theological resources. Being the first major theological treatment in the field it sets the agenda for more detailed considerations.

Lesbians and gays have gone from "coming out," to "acting up," to "outing," meanwhile radically redefining society's views on sexuality and gender. The essays in Inside/Out employ a variety of approaches (psychoanalysis, deconstruction, semiotics, and discourse theory) to investigate representations of sex and sexual difference in literature, film, video, music, and photography. Engaging the figures of divas, dykes, vampires and queens, the contributors address issues such as AIDS, pornography, pedagogy, authorship, and activism. Inside/Out shifts the focus from sex to sexual orientation, provoking a reconsideration of the concepts of the sexual and the political.

Bringing together forty-two groundbreaking essays--many of them already classics--The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader provides a much-needed introduction to the contemporary state of lesbian/gay studies, extensively illustrating the range, scope, diversity, appeal, and power of the work currently being done in the field. Featuring essays by such prominent scholars as Judith Butler, John D'Emilio, Kobena Mercer, Adrienne Rich, Gayle Rubin, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader explores a multitude of sexual, ethnic, racial, and socio-economic experiences. Ranging across disciplines including history, literature, critical theory, cultural studies, African American studies, ethnic studies, sociology, anthropology, psychology, classics, and philosophy, this anthology traces the inscription of sexual meanings in all forms of cultural expression. Representing the best and most significant English language work in the field, The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader addresses topics such as butch-fem roles, the cultural construction of gender, lesbian separatism, feminist theory, AIDS, safe-sex education, colonialism, S/M, Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, children's books, black nationalism, popular films, Susan Sontag, the closet, homophobia, Freud, Sappho, the media, the hijras of India, Robert Mapplethorpe, and the politics of representation. It also contains an extensive bibliographical essay which will provide readers with an invaluable guide to further reading. Contributors: Henry Abelove, Tomas Almaguer, Ana Maria Alonso, Michele Barale, Judith Butler, Sue-Ellen Case, Danae Clark, Douglas Crimp, Teresa de Lauretis, John D'Emilio, Jonathan Dollimore, Lee Edelman, Marilyn Frye, Charlotte Furth, Marjorie Garber, Stuart Hall, David Halperin, Phillip Brian Harper, Gloria T. Hull, Maria Teresa Koreck, Audre Lorde, Biddy Martin, Deborah E. McDowell, Kobena Mercer, Richard Meyer, D. A. Miller, Serena Nanda, Esther Newton, Cindy Patton, Adrienne Rich, Gayle Rubin, Joan W. Scott, Daniel L. Selden, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Barbara Smith, Catharine R. Stimpson, Sasha Torres, Martha Vicinus, Simon Watney, Harriet Whitehead, John J. Winkler, Monique Wittig, and Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano