Categoría: Libros

«The Disintegration of a Critic», Jilll Johnston (2019)

+ info: The Disintegration of a Critic

Jill Johnston (1969–2010) was a columnist and critic for the Village Voice and the author of Lesbian Nation

Collected texts by cultural critic, auto/biographer, and lesbian icon Jill Johnston.

Jill Johnston―cultural critic, auto/biographer, and lesbian icon―began her career at the Village Voice as a critic of dance and performance, writing about Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham, the activities at Judson Church, Allan Kaprow and Happenings, Fluxus, and the downtown New York art scene. The column eventually became more personal than critical, allowing her to discuss her life, her sexuality, and her politics. This book brings together thirty texts Johnston wrote for the Voice between 1960 and 1974, beginning with her early dance coverage and continuing though the time when, as she put it, the column moved “from the theatre of dance and happenings toward the theatre of my life.”
As Johnston abandoned an objective critical standpoint, her column interwove forms and formats, and political, literary, art-historical, and critical perspectives, taking turns and loops, reflecting its time and contexts―with the one constant being Johnston’s unmistakable, witty, intimate voice. As a person and as a writer she pioneered a model that not only challenged notions of writerly appropriateness but also performed and created a new lesbian identity.
This collection also includes texts by Ingrid Nyeboe, Johnston’s long-time partner and spouse; Bruce Hainley; and Jennifer Krasinski. An appendix collects material related to a 1969 panel discussion organized by Johnston (featuring Andy Warhol, Ultra Violet, and Carolee Schneemann, among others) that gives this volume its title: “The Disintegration of a Critic: An Analysis of Jill Johnston.”

Copublished with Bergen Kunsthall

«Homosexuality on the Small Screen. Television and Gay Identity in Britain», Sebastian Buckle (2018)

+ info: Bloomsbury

Television provides a unique account of the development of a homosexual identity across the western world, emerging as it did when ideas around sex and sexuality were themselves only just beginning to be publicly discussed. From the very earliest surviving drama featuring homosexuality in 1959, Homosexuality on the Small Screen explores each decade’s programming in turn, looking at homosexual themes, storylines, and characters, situating them historically, and relating them to the broader events in British history. By doing so it examines the interactions between the medium and the reality of gay lives, showing how television mirrored the changes taking place in British society. For those with a homosexual – or emerging homosexual – sexual orientation, they were seminal in early personal and social development. For heterosexual viewers, these images were equally important in exploring a sexual other which otherwise remained hidden from them. They included positive storylines which helped improve public ideas about homosexuality, but also stereotypical images which propagated negative attitudes in the public consciousness.
Homosexuality on the Small Screen charts this fascinating journey and television’s role in the construction of a gay identity.

«Immigrants on Grindr. Race, Sexuality and Belonging Online», Andrew DJ Shield (2019)

+ info: Plagrave Macmillan

This book examines the role of hook-up apps in the lives of gay, bi, trans, and queer immigrants and refugees, and how the online culture of these platforms promotes belonging or exclusion. Within the context of the so-called European refugee crisis, this research focuses on the experiences of immigrants from especially Muslim-majority countries to the greater Copenhagen area, a region known for both its progressive ideologies and its anti-immigrant practices. Grindr and similar platforms connect newcomers with not only dates and sex, but also friends, roommates and other logistical contacts. But these socio-sexual platforms also become spaces of racialization and othering. Weaving together analyses of real Grindr profile texts, immigrant narratives, political rhetoric, and popular media, Immigrants on Grindr provides an in-depth look at the complex interplay between online and offline cultures, and between technology and society.

Andrew D.J. Shield is Assistant Professor at Leiden University, Netherlands, where he specializes in sexuality, migration, and diversity studies. He is the author of Immigrants in the Sexual Revolution (2017), and co-founder of the Leiden Queer History Network. He lives and bikes in Amsterdam and Copenhagen.