College Literature articles from February 1997

College Literature archives from February 1997

Introduction: queer works.(Queer Utilities: Textual Studies, Theory, Pedagogy, Praxis)
February 1, 1997... "Queer" works, that is, performs work, in often startling ways; certainly its ripple effects have been remarkable, sometimes uncontrollable. In late 1993 a colleague and I attempted to create a research center at our university, one which we...

Queercore: the distinct identities of subculture.(Queer Utilities: Textual Studies, Theory, Pedagogy, Praxis)
February 1, 1997... (For Judy Sisneros, our own queer saint) In late 1995, the post-grunge band Garbage had something of a hit with a song simply entitled "Queer." No one in the band identifies (at least publicly) as queer, and (perhaps even more oddly) questions...

Women on top, boys on the side, but some of us are brave: blackness, lesbianism, and the visible.(Queer Utilities: Textual Studies, Theory, Pedagogy, Praxis)
February 1, 1997... We have cooperated for a very long time in the maintenance of our own invisibility. And now the party is over. Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet [W]ho do we mean, after all, by "our own"? Jackie Goldsby, "What It Means To Be Colored Me"...

Teaching Paul Monette's memoir/manifesto to resistant readers.(Queer Utilities: Textual Studies, Theory, Pedagogy, Praxis)
February 1, 1997... We write about an experience with a contemporary text included in a senior seminar taught by one of us, Barbara Waxman, in the Fall of 1993. Senior seminars are required of graduating English majors at our institution, and the literature majors...

To queer or not to queer: that's not the question.(Queer Utilities: Textual Studies, Theory, Pedagogy, Praxis)
February 1, 1997... Two anecdotes frame my concerns about the increasing academic commodification of queer theory and inform my sense of how to introduce queer issues in the classroom. The first is a local story. At the selective liberal arts college where I teach,...

Cross-border shopping and niche marketing: academic economies and lesbian and gay studies.(Queer Utilities: Textual Studies, Theory, Pedagogy, Praxis)
February 1, 1997... I would like to frame the following speculations by emphasizing that they are intended to serve as a reference point for discussion, and by no means represent an exhaustive inquiry into the history or future of lesbian and gay studies. What I...

From Oran to San Francisco: Shilts appropriates Camus. (Randy Shilts; Albert Camus)(Queer Utilities: Textual Studies, Theory, Pedagogy, Praxis)
February 1, 1997... Was not Camus's only fault, apart from being too widely read, that he was right too soon? Bertrand Poirot-Delpech Even before his narrative begins, Albert Camus offers a cue on how to read The Plague. He positions a statement by Daniel Defoe...

Liberating narrative: AIDS and the limits of melodrama in Monette and Weir.(Queer Utilities: Textual Studies, Theory, Pedagogy, Praxis)
February 1, 1997... In his recent novel, Gone Tomorrow, Gary Indiana's main character complains that because of AIDS, homosexuality has turned into "sozialkitsch" and is "being treated as a 'social problem'": "He cited in particular a dreadfully insipid 'AIDS...

Greece and homosexual identity in Edmund White's 'An Oracle.'(Queer Utilities: Textual Studies, Theory, Pedagogy, Praxis)
February 1, 1997... Early in his AIDS memoir of the last two years of Roger Horwitz's life Paul Monette recounts their visit to Greece just before Roger's diagnosis. The account begins with some self-admittedly sentimental observations about the personal and...

We are family: black nationalism, black masculinity, and the black gay cultural imagination.(Queer Utilities: Textual Studies, Theory, Pedagogy, Praxis)
February 1, 1997... Desire is always the axis along which different forms of cultural policing takes place. And desire across racial and sexual lines was the site for constructing my film Young Soul Rebel. The crossing of these lines causes anxiety, undermines...

Performative chic: the fantasy of a performative politics.(Queer Utilities: Textual Studies, Theory, Pedagogy, Praxis)
February 1, 1997... The recent vogue for performativity, particularly in gender and postcolonial studies, suggests that the desire for political potency has displaced the demand for critical rigor.(1) Because Judith Butler bears the primary responsibility for...