Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
An essential text documenting the foundation and rise of queer theory.Founded in 1992, the David R. Kessler lectures represent the foreground of queer studies in the US, featuring legendary thinkers such as Cherr e Moraga, Samuel R. Delany, Dean Spade, Sara Ahmed, and more. This canonical volume brings together the first ten lectures and explores questions of sexuality and gender, as well as how new--and queer--ideas are thought into being.
Queer Ideas features interdisciplinary scholarship from the field's founding thinkers: Edmund White on literature and criticism, Barbara Smith on Black lesbian and gay history, Esther Newton on being butch, Samuel R. Delany on class and capitalism, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick on love, Judith Butler on human rights, and more. This new edition remains a testimony to queer studies as it emerged in the last quarter of the twentieth century, and provides a necessary introduction for a new generation of feminist scholars, thinkers, and activists.
Synopsis
An essential text documenting the foundation and rise of queer theory.
The David R. Kessler Lectures, established in 1992 by CLAGS: Center for LGBTQ Studies at CUNY, represent the cutting edge of queer studies in the United States. Years before LGBTQ studies had found a foothold in American academia, the Kessler Lectures celebrated dynamic and diverse inquiries into queer thought, community, and politics.
Twenty years after its initial publication,
Queer Ideas collects the first ten historic Kessler Lectures by influential scholars, writers, and activists including Cherr e Moraga, Samuel R. Delany, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Barbara Smith, with a new foreword by philosopher and Kessler honoree Judith Butler. Alongside the second volume,
Queer Then and Now: The David R. Kessler Lectures, 2002-2020, this revised edition of
Queer Ideas traces the early foundations of the field and provides a new opportunity to revisit an essential collection of queer and trans thought.