2SLGBTQIA+ Resources

Since the late 1980s, queer studies and theory have become vital to the intellectual and political life of the United States. This has been due, in no small degree, to the influence of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's critically acclaimed Epistemology of the Closet.

Location: Koerner & Okanagan Library

The volume highlights a diverse range of identities, relationship structures, and understandings of bodies, sexualities, and interpersonal relationships.

Location: Online

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.

Location: Koerner & Okanagan Library

Language, Gender, and Sexuality offers a panoramic and accessible introduction to the ways in which linguistic patterns are sensitive to social categories of gender and sexuality, as well as an overview of how speakers use language to create and display gender and sexuality.

Location: Online

Sarah Prager delves deep into the lives of 23 people who fought, created, and loved on their own terms. From high-profile figures like Abraham Lincoln and Eleanor Roosevelt to the trailblazing gender-ambiguous Queen of Sweden and a bisexual blues singer who didn't make it into your history books, these true stories uncover a rich queer heritage that encompasses every culture, in every era.

Location: Education Library

Covering both historical and contemporary perspectives on law and criminal justice, organizing and resistance, health and medicine, labour, education, marriage and family, sport, popular and youth culture, and visual media, these essays also integrate marginalities such as race, class, and gender.

Location: Koerner & Okanagan Library

Canada is considered a leader when it comes to LGBTQ rights, yet this is a fairly recent phenomenon – one that is largely due to the tireless work of disparate groups of LGBTQ activists. Queer Mobilizations examines the relationships between LGBTQ activists and local, provincial, and federal Canadian governments. The contributors explore how various governments have tried to regulate and repress LGBTQ movements, and how, in turn, queer activists have successfully shaped public policy, across the political spectrum, from city halls to Parliament Hill.

Location: Online

Written for entry-level survey courses in queer or LGBTQ+ Studies for students from all majors, this engaging text covers a wide range of topics.

Location: Online

"Queer theory," asserts Linda Garber, "alternately buries and vilifies lesbian feminism, missing its valuable insights and ignoring its rich contributions." Rejecting the either/or choice between lesbianism and queer theory, she favors an inclusive approach that defies current factionalism. In an eloquent challenge to the privileging of queer theory in the academy, Garber calls for recognition of the historical--and intellectually significant--role of lesbian poets as theorists of lesbian identity and activism. The connections, Garber shows, are most clearly seen when looking at the pivotal work of working-class lesbians/lesbians of color whose articulations of multiple, simultaneous identity positions and activist politics both belong to lesbian feminism and presage queer theory. Identity Poetics includes a critical overview of recent historical writing about the women's and lesbian-feminist movements of the 1970s; discussions of the works of Judy Grahn, Pat Parker, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, and Gloria Anzaldúa; and, finally, a chapter on the rise and hegemony of queer theory within lesbigay studies.
Location: Koerner Library

This collection brings together the work of both film scholars and queer theorists to advance a more sophisticated notion of queer film criticism. While the "politics of representation" has been the focus of much previous gay and lesbian film criticism, the contributors to Out Takes employ the approaches of queer theory to move beyond conventional readings and to reexamine aspects of the cinematic gaze in relation to queer desire and spectatorship. The essays examine a wide array of films, including Calamity Jane, Rear Window, The Hunger, Heavenly Creatures, and Bound , and discuss such figures as Doris Day, Elizabeth Taylor, and Alfred Hitchcock. Divided into three sections, the first part reconsiders the construction of masculinity and male homoerotic desire--especially with respect to the role of women--in classic cinema of the 1940s and 1950s. The second section offers a deconstructive consideration of lesbian film spectatorship and lesbian representation. Part three looks at the historical trajectory of independent queer cinema, including works by H.D., Kenneth Anger, and Derek Jarman. By exploring new approaches to the study of sexuality in film, Out Takes will be useful to scholars in gay and lesbian studies, queer theory, and cinema studies. Contributors. Bonnie Burns, Steven Cohan, Alexander Doty, Lee Edelman, Michelle Elleray, Jim Ellis, Ellis Hanson, D. A. Miller, Eric Savoy, Matthew Tinkcom, Amy Villarejo, Jean Walton
Location: Koerner Library

Michel Foucault was the first to embed the roots of human sexuality in discipline and biopolitics, therefore revolutionizing our conception of sex and its relationship to society, economics, and culture. Yet over the past two decades, scholars have limited themselves to the study of Foucault's History of Sexuality, volume 1 paying lesser attention to his equally explosive History of Madness. In this earlier volume, Foucault recasts Western rationalism as a project that both produces and represses sexual deviants, calling out the complicity of modern science and the exclusionary nature of family morality. By reclaiming these deft moves, Lynne Huffer teases out exciting new strands of Foucauldian thought. She then revisits the theorist's ethical work in light of these discoveries, divining an ethics of eros that sees sexuality as a lived experience we are repeatedly called on to remember. Throughout her study, Huffer weaves her own experiences together with Foucault's, sampling from unpublished interviews and other archived materials in order to intimately rework the problem of sexuality as a product of reason.
Location: Okanagan & Koerner Library