Queer 1950s

Leading sexuality scholars explore queer lives and cultures in the first full post-war decade through an array of sources and a range of perspectives. Drawing out the particularities of queer cultures from the Finland and New Zealand to the UK and the USA, this collection rethinks preconceptions of the 1950s and pinpoints some of its legacies.

Leading sexuality scholars explore queer lives and cultures in the first full post-war decade through an array of sources and a range of perspectives. Drawing out the particularities of queer cultures from the Finland and New Zealand to the UK and the USA, this collection rethinks preconceptions of the 1950s and pinpoints some of its legacies.

Collection of letters written to the first openly gay magazine in the United States.

A chronicle of the modern struggle for gay, lesbian and transgender rights draws on interviews with politicians, military figures, legal activists and members of the LGBT community to document the cause's struggles since the 1950s.

Queer Retrosexuality: The Politics of Reparative Return analyzes the cultural, theoretical, and political value of thinking about retrospection in conjunction with queerness. It historically grounds and exemplifies the call for a more "reparatively" informed queer theory in its contextualization of reparation through the return to the 1950s. The book thus contributes and furthers some of the dynamic conversations around the politics of queer temporality and historiography.

Imaginative Resistance, Queer Fiction and the Law develops a novel account of how heteronormative sociolegal orders undermine the well-being of same-sex attracted people, even when these normative orders may fall short of coercively interfering with their choices. Queer well-being is generally studied from psychological perspectives, through the concept of ‘minority stress.’ Taking four texts of mid-century Anglo-American queer fiction as illustrative case studies, this book argues – in a philosophical rather than a psychological register – that heteronormativity also affects queer well-being in more intangible ways. The central claim is that heteronormativity shackles the imagination: it curtails no less the imaginative reach of authors of queer fiction, than our ability – engaged as we are in projects of self-authorship – to make-believe personal futures in which same-sex intimacy is brought to bear on our well-being. The book’s central claim re-works a concept central to the philosophy of fiction – ‘imaginative resistance’ – and puts it into service of questions raised in moral philosophy. Apart from its political and normative implications – strengthening the case for at least some global gay rights – and from challenging some of queer theory’s orthodoxies, the book also makes contributions to queer literary history, criticism and biography. Drawing on archival material and personal interviews, fresh readings are offered of Charles Jackson’s The Fall of Valor (1946), Gillian Freeman’s The Leather Boys (1961), and Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt (1952) and The Talented Mr Ripley (1955), making a case for their inclusion in the queer literary canon. Imaginative Resistance, Queer Fiction and the Law will appeal to students of literary criticism, queer sociolegal history, law & literature, the philosophy of fiction, and queer theory, politics and ethics.

A new edition of a classic work of history, revealing the anti-homosexual purges of midcentury Washington. In The Lavender Scare, David K. Johnson tells the frightening story of how, during the Cold War, homosexuals were considered as dangerous a threat to national security as Communists. Charges that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were havens for homosexuals proved a potent political weapon, sparking a “Lavender Scare” more vehement and long-lasting than Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare. Drawing on declassified documents, years of research in the records of the National Archives and the FBI, and interviews with former civil servants, Johnson recreates the vibrant gay subculture that flourished in midcentury Washington and takes us inside the security interrogation rooms where anti-homosexual purges ruined the lives and careers of thousands of Americans. This enlarged edition of Johnson’s classic work of history—the winner of numerous awards and the basis for an acclaimed documentary broadcast on PBS—features a new epilogue, bringing the still-relevant story into the twenty-first century.

" ... Post-World War II account of Leonard Clark's search for the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola"--Page 4 of cover.