Queer Corner

Vocabulary! 

Gender Identity: A sense of one’s self as trans*, genderqueer, woman, man, or some other identity, which may or may not correspond with the sex and gender one is assigned at birth.

Gender Expression: How one expresses oneself, in terms of dress and/or behaviors.  Society, and people that make up society characterize these expressions as "masculine,” “feminine,” or “androgynous.”  Individuals may embody their gender in a multitude of ways and have terms beyond these to name their gender expression(s).

Drag King:  A person (often a woman) who appears as a man. Generally in reference to an act or performance.  This has no implications regarding gender identity.

Drag Queen:  A person (often a man) who appears as a woman. Generally in reference to an act or performance. This has no implications regarding gender identity.

Cross Dresser (CD): A word to describe a person who dresses, at least partially, as a member of a gender other than their assigned sex; carries no implications of sexual orientation. Has replaced “Transvestite”

Check back next month to start the year off with an A!!

I Am Not Myself These Days by Josh Kilmer-Purcell

Call Number: 306.778 K488i 2006

ISBN: 0060817321

Publication Date: 2006

The New York Times bestselling, darkly funny memoir of a young New Yorker's daring dual life--advertising art director by day,glitter-dripping drag queen and nightclub beauty-pageant hopeful by night--was a smash literary debut for Josh Kilmer-Purcell, now known for his popular Planet Green television series The Fabulous Beekman Boys.His story begins here--before the homemade goat milk soaps and hand-gathered honeys, before his memoir of the city mouse's move to the country, The Bucolic Plague--in I Am Not Myself These Days,  with "plenty of dishy anecdotes and moments of tragi-camp delight" (WashingtonPost).

Gender Trouble by Judith Butler; Linda J. Nicholson (Editor)

Call Number: 305.3 B985g

ISBN: 0415900425

Publication Date: 1989-11-15

Since its publication in 1990, "Gender Trouble" has become one of the key works of contemporary feminist theory, and an essential work for anyone interested in the study of gender, queer theory, or the politics of sexuality in culture. As Judith Butler writes in the major essay that stands as preface to the new edition, one point of "Gender Trouble" was 'not to prescribe a new gendered way of life, but to open of the field of possibility for gender.' Widely taught, and widely debated, "Gender Trouble" continues to offer a powerful critique of heteronormativity and of the function of gender in the modern world. Judith Butler's new preface situates "Gender Trouble" within the past decade of work on gender, and counters some common misconceptions about the book and its aims.

Changing Room by Laurence Senelick

Call Number: E-Book

ISBN: 0203411072

Publication Date: 2002-09-11

The answers to these questions - and much, much more - are to be found in The Changing Room , which traces the origins and variations of theatrical cross-dressing through the ages and across cultures. It examines: * tribal rituals and shamanic practices in the Balkans and Chinese-Tibet * the gender-bending elements of Greek and early Christian religion * the homosexual appeal of the boy actor on the traditional stage of China, Japan and England * the origins of the dame comedian, the principal boy, the glamour drag artiste and the male impersonator * artists such as David Bowie, Boy George, Charles Ludlam, Dame Edna Everage, Lily Savage, Candy Darling, Julian Clary and the New York Dolls. Lavishly illustrated with unusual and rare pictures, this is the first ever cross-cultural study of theatrical transvestism. It is a must for anyone interested in cross-dressing, theatre, and gender.

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare; Elizabeth Story Donno (Editor); Penny Gay (Introduction by)

Call Number: 822.33 T7d 2017

ISBN: 1107126274

Publication Date: 2017-08-17

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This third edition of Twelfth Night retains the text edited and annotated by Elizabeth Story Donno for the first edition of 1985, and features an updated introduction by Penny Gay, which focuses on recent scholarship and performance history. Building on her Introduction to the second edition, Gay stresses the play's theatricality, its elaborate linguistic games and its complex use of Ovidian myths. She analyses the delicate balance Shakespeare strikes in Twelfth Night between romance and realism, and explores representations of gender, sexuality and identity in the text. A selection of new photographs completes the edition.

Man-made woman the dialectics of cross-dressing by Ciara Cremin

Call Number: E-Book

ISBN: 9781786801418

Publication Date: 2017

On July 27th, 2015, Colin Cremin overcame a lifetime of fear and repression and came to work dressed as a woman called Ciara. This book charts her personal journey as a male-to-female cross-dresser in the ever-changing world of gender politics. Interweaving the personal and the political, through discussions of fetishism, aesthetics and popular culture, Man-Made Woman explores gender, identity and pleasure through the lenses of feminism, Marxism and psychoanalytic theory. Cremin’s anti-moralistic approach dismantles the abjection associated with male-to-female cross dressing, examining the causes of its repression, and considers what it means to publicly materialise desire on her body. Emancipatory and empowering: Cremin interrogates her, his and our relationship to the gender binary. Man-Made Woman is an experiment in thought and practice through which both author and reader are drawn ultimately into a conflict with our material, ideological and libidinal relationship to patriarchal-capitalism.

Unsettling Assumptions by Pauline Greenhill (Editor); Diane Tye (Editor)

Call Number: E-Book

ISBN: 9780874218985

Publication Date: 2014-10-15

In Unsettling Assumptions, editors Pauline Greenhill and Diane Tye examine how tradition and gender come together to unsettle assumptions about culture and its study. Contributors explore the intersections of traditional expressive culture and sex/gender systems to question, investigate, or upset concepts like family, ethics, and authenticity. Individual essays consider myriad topics such as Thanksgiving turkeys, rockabilly and bar fights, Chinese tales of female ghosts, selkie stories, a noisy Mennonite New Year's celebration, the Distaff Gospels, Kentucky tobacco farmers, international adoptions, and more. In Unsettling Assumptions, folkloric forms express but also counteract negative aspects of culture like misogyny, homophobia, and racism. But expressive culture also emerges as fundamental to our sense of belonging to a family, an occupation, or friendship group and, most notably, to identity performativity and the construction and negotiation of power.