Lexington Books Identities on the Move: Contemporary Representations of New Sexualities and Gender Identities

The development of new sexualities and gender identities has become a crucial issue in the field of literary and cultural studies in the first years of the twenty-first century. The roles of gender and sexual identities in the struggle for equality have become a major concern in both fields. The legacy of this process has its origins in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the twentieth century. The Victorian preoccupation about the female body and sexual promiscuity was focused on the regulation of deviant elements in society and the control of venereal disease; homosexuals, lesbians, and prostitutes' identities were considered out of the norm and against the moral values of the time. The relationship between sexuality and gender identity has attracted wide-ranging discussion amongst feminist theorists during the last few decades. The methodologies of cultural studies and, in particular, of post-structuralism and post-colonialism, urges us to read and interpret different cultures and different texts in ways that enhance personal and collective views of identity which are culturally grounded. These readings question the postmodernist concept of identity by looking into more progressive views of identity and difference addressing post-positivist interpretations of key identity markers such as sex, gender, race, and agency. As a consequence, an individual's identity is recognized as culturally constructed and the result of power relations. Identities on the Move: Contemporary Representations of New Sexualities and Gender Identities offers creative insights on pressing issues and engages in productive dialogue. Identities on the Move to addresses the topic of new sexualities and gender identities and their representation in post-colonial and contemporary Anglophone literary, historical, and cultural productions from a trans-national, trans-cultural, and anti-essentialist perspective. The authors include the views and concerns of people of color, of women in the diaspora, in our evermore multiethnic and multicultural societies, and their representation in the media, films, popular culture, subcultures, and the arts. Review This collection of essays will make you uncomfortable, challenging everything you thought you knew about gender theory, migration theory, queer theory, postcolonialism, geopolitics, and sex trafficking. Acknowledging yet questioning the foundations for theoretical approaches set out in the twentieth century, the sixteen essays included here stretch our consciousness and provoke new questions, new formulations, and explode our academic "givens". A must-read.--Justine Tally, University of La Laguna Borrego and Ruiz have assembled a comprehensive and diverse collection of case studies, theoretical essays, and film, novel, and character analyses, all of which foreground cultural and literary approaches to understandings of identity. Contributors discuss topics such as migration and queerness; representations of anti-trafficking and prostitution; the trauma of incest; uses and transgressions of the physical body; (ab)uses of silence, power, and collective action; post-decolonialism and post-humanism; feminism, black feminism, and patriarchy; victimization and agency; and anti-essentialist, hybrid, and intersectional understandings of identity. Strengths of the collection include its focus on contemporary controversial issues tied to gender, sexuality, race, and location; its use of short, accessible, theoretically informed chapters; and its innovative, disruptive configurations of identity. These nuanced accounts consider how such configurations are constrained by, and may even perpetuate, stereotypical, dominant, and insidious understandings of identity. This book will appeal to multiple audiences and could be of great use in courses that focus primarily on personal and social identities. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers.--CHOICE Identities on the Move is a substantial and s