The first image in Carol is that of a subway grate. Seen up close, it resembles both a baroque tapestry and the gilded bars of a birdcage. What follows is every bit as visually stimulating, and, with compelling performances to complement cinematographer Edward Lachman’s gorgeous camerawork and Haynes’ exacting directorial style …
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In the first chapter of The Sexuality of History—a play on Michel Foucault’s famous title, The History of Sexuality—Susan S. Lanser argues that the basic trappings of modern Western civilization, everything from eating with forks to the “rights of man,” first appeared in the 1600s and have been developing since then.
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THE INTERWAR YEARS, from the Armistice of 1918 until Pearl Harbor, were fertile for cultural productivity in New York City. Gay men and lesbians were at the heart of accomplishments…More
THIS YEAR, as America’s two oldest women’s music festivals—Michigan and National—prepare to celebrate landmark fortieth anniversaries, a number of powerful organizations have signed a petition against the Michigan festival, endorsing an economic boycott of all artists who perform there.
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Daniel Schreiber, a Berlin-based journalist and critic, originally published this biography in Germany in 2007 as Susan Sontag: Geist und Glamour. Translated from the German by David Dollenmayer as Susan Sontag: A Biography, the book is for the most part an engaging and fascinating life story …
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This volume covers Sontag’s life from age 31 to 47. During this period, she wrote some of her best-known essays, including the epic ‘Notes on Camp’ (1964). …
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In Lesbian Rule: Cultural Criticism and the Value of Desire, Amy Villarejo, an Associate Professor at Cornell University, takes the quest for lesbian visibility on a journey beyond the bounds of what we know for sure.
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NEVER PUBLISHED during her lifetime, To Do is an abecedarian book with as much child appeal as an Edward Gorey ‘A is for …’ book. This was actually [Gertrude] Stein’s second book written for children.
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ANYONE whose life was impacted in even a small way by the punk-feminist subculture known as Riot Grrrl will find it hard to read Sara Marcus’s thoroughly researched history of the movement and remain seated throughout. From its inception, traced here to 1989 and the creation of the band Bikini Kill, through the dissolution of most of its organizational hubs by 1996, Riot Grrrl existed in an emotionally amplified space. The fierce unity of the first small tribes that sprung up in Olympia, Washington, and Washington D.C. contrasts with the fire and fury at male privilege that inspired some of the movement’s finest work
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WHY ARE WE still interested in the lesbian hipster? In part it’s because we can’t stop lurking around her pictures on Facebook, which are beyond cute. But it’s mostly because the “lesbian” and “hipster” worlds seem to have converged so naturally that there’s clearly something going on past Generation X/Y’s universal adoption of any eastward-blowing trend-wind.
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