Synopses & Reviews
Looks can be deceiving, and in a society where one's status and access to opportunity are largely attendant on physical appearance, the issue of how difference is constructed and interpreted, embraced or effaced, is of tremendous import.
Lisa Walker examines this issue with a focus on the questions of what it means to look like a lesbian, and what it means to be a lesbian but not to look like one. She analyzes the historical production of the lesbian body as marked, and studies how lesbians have used the frequent analogy between racial difference and sexual orientation to craft, emphasize, or deny physical difference. In particular, she explores the implications of a predominantly visible model of sexual identity for the feminine lesbian, who is both marked and unmarked, desired and disavowed.
Walker's textual analysis cuts across a variety of genres, including modernist fiction such as The Well of Loneliness and Wide Sargasso Sea, pulp fiction of the Harlem Renaissance, the 1950s and the 1960s, post-modern literature as Michelle Cliff's Abeng, and queer theory.
In the book's final chapter, "How to Recognize a Lesbian," Walker argues that strategies of visibility are at times deconstructed, at times reinscribed within contemporary lesbian-feminist theory.
Review
"The history provided by Stearns . . . suggests that parents are unlikely to find the answer to this enduring problem in the advice books they consume in such vast quantities."
"Richly and deeply documented, this history offers readers a chance to follow an intriguing problem: Can and should emotions be suppressed? Channeled? Expressed spontaneously? The patterns of the past cover everything from mourning outfits for dolls and acceptable violence on the part of jealous husbands to the rise and fall of dating and the sanctions against expressing anger at school and at work. American Cool represents a major synthesis by one of the most innovative and accomplished historians of our time."
"Peter Stearns argues that 20th century cultural styles stunt and stifle the emotions behind a veneer of cool. With a breathtaking scholarly sweep through the development of this concept of cool, he provokes and compels us to rethink our very understanding of the American character. Without a doubt, this is the best of Stearns's work on the history of emotions to date, and should be read by all who are concerned about the current crisis in American values."
Review
"Libraries serving upper-division undergraduates and graduate students should acquire this work."-Choice,
Review
"One of the great virtues of Lisa Walker's Looking Like What You Are is the ease with which she is able to personalize theoretical discourses. After being drawn in by her narrative style and her engaging use of anecdote, the reader will discover an elegantly written, thoroughly substantiated, and deeply convincing argument about the role of visibility in twentieth-century identity politics."-Bonnie Zimmerman,San Diego State University
Review
"Both a remarkable feat of conscientious scholarship and a pleasure to read, Looking Like What You Are will prove of great interest to scholars of gender, race/ethnicity, class, and sexuality alike."-Renée C. Hoogland,University of Nijmegan
Review
"Subtle, lucid, and stylish, Walker's book offers a provocative and challenging model for living and writing in 'sustained contradiction.'"-Elizabeth Meese,University of Alabama
Synopsis
"Richly and deeply documented, this history offers readers a chance to follow an intriguing problem: Can and should emotions be suppressed? Channeled? Expressed spontaneously? A major synthesis by one of the most innovative and accomplished historians of our time." --John Burnham, Ohio State University
"Peter Stearns argues that twentieth-century cultural styles stunt and stifle the emotions behind a veneer of cool. With a breathtaking scholarly sweep through the development of this concept of cool, he provokes and compels us to rethink our very understanding of the American character. Without a doubt, this is the best of Stearn's work on the history of emotions to date, and should be read by all who are concerned about the current crisis in American values." --Kevin White, University of Sussex
Cool. The concept, distinctly American, permeates almost every aspect of contemporary American society. From Kool cigarettes and the Peanuts cartoon's Joe Cool to "West Side Story" and urban slang, the idea of cool, in its many manifestations, has seized a central place in our vocabulary and in our culture.
Where did this preoccupation with cool come from? How was Victorian culture, seemingly so ensconced, replaced with the current emotional status quo? Whence came "American Cool"?
These are the questions Peter Stearns seeks to answer in this timely and engaging volume.
Synopsis
Cool. The concept has distinctly American qualities and it permeates almost every aspect of contemporary American culture. From Kool cigarettes and the Peanuts cartoon's Joe Cool to
West Side Story (Keep cool, boy.) and urban slang (Be cool. Chill out.), the idea of cool, in its many manifestations, has seized a central place in our vocabulary.
Where did this preoccupation with cool come from? How was Victorian culture, seemingly so ensconced, replaced with the current emotional status quo? From whence came American Cool?
These are the questions Peter Stearns seeks to answer in this timely and engaging volume.
American Cool focuses extensively on the transition decades, from the erosion of Victorianism in the 1920s to the solidification of a cool culture in the 1960s. Beyond describing the characteristics of the new directions and how they altered or amended earlier standards, the book seeks to explain why the change occured. It then assesses some of the outcomes and longer-range consequences of this transformation.
Synopsis
Cool. The concept has distinctly American qualities and it permeates almost every aspect of contemporary American culture. From Kool cigarettes and the Peanuts cartoon's Joe Cool to West Side Story (Keep cool, boy.) and urban slang (Be cool. Chill out.), the idea of cool, in its many manifestations, has seized a central place in our vocabulary.
Where did this preoccupation with cool come from? How was Victorian culture, seemingly so ensconced, replaced with the current emotional status quo? From whence came American Cool?
These are the questions Peter Stearns seeks to answer in this timely and engaging volume.
American Cool focuses extensively on the transition decades, from the erosion of Victorianism in the 1920s to the solidification of a cool culture in the 1960s. Beyond describing the characteristics of the new directions and how they altered or amended earlier standards, the book seeks to explain why the change occured. It then assesses some of the outcomes and longer-range consequences of this transformation.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 311-359) and index.
About the Author
Peter N. Stearns is Provost and Professor of History at George Mason University. His publications include The Encyclopedia of World History; Western Civilizations in World History; World Civilizations, Volume II: 1450 to the Present; and World History in Brief: Major Patterns of Change and Continuity.