Queer Theories

This essential introductory guide explores and aggressively expands the provocative new field of sexual identity studies. It explains the history of sexual identity categories such as 'gay' and 'lesbian' covers the reclamation of 'queer' as a term of radical self-identification and details recent challenges to sexual identity studies posed by transgender and bisexual theories. Donald E. Hall offers concrete applications of the abstract theories he explores with imaginative new readings of such works as 'The Yellow Wallpaper' <i>Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde</i> <i>Orlando</i> and <i>The Color Purple</i>.Throughout Hall urges the reader to grapple with the changing nature of sexual identity in the twenty-first century and asks searching questions about how we might identify ourselves differently given new technologies and new possibilities for sexual experimentation. To students theorists and activists alike <i>Queer Theories</i> issues a challenge to continue to disrupt narrow traditional notions of sexual 'normality' and to resist setting up new and confining categories of 'true' sexual identity.