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Literary Research: Queer and Trans Theory
Literary Theory and Criticism
What is Queer Theory? What is Trans Theory?
"Queer theory is the radical deconstruction of sexual rhetoric...Although it takes as foundational its insights into the instability of language and the historical contingency of sexuality, queer theory is not a unified doctrine or political agenda but a highly mobile practice of imminent critique that draws its form and content from the shifting rhetoric of sexual politics. It interrogates the binaristic thinking that has traditionally characterized sexual politics, in particular such familiar oppositions as heterosexuality/homosexuality, masculine/feminine, sex/gender, closeted/out, center/margin, conscious/unconscious, nature/culture, and normal/pathological, to name a few. It has also sought to bring sexual politics, in particular antihomophobic critique, to the fore of intellectual debate...
Transgender theorists—Bornstein, Califia, Feinberg, King, Stryker—are therefore concerned with the multiplicities and identity dynamisms (performative-subversive possibilities) indicated in the 'trans'."
Brief Overviews:
- Gay and Lesbian Studies (Literary Theory Handbook)
- Queer Theory (Oxford Research Encyclopedias)
- Queer Theory (Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory)
- Queer Theory (A Companion to Literary Theory)
- Gender and Queer Theory (Routledge Companion to Critical and Cultural Theory)
- Introduction (Transgender Studies Quarterly, 1st issue)
- Trans Theorizing (Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies)
Notable Scholars:
- Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 1990.
- Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York: Routledge, 1993.
- Butler, Judith, and Sara. Salih. The Judith Butler Reader. Blackwell Pub., 2003.
- Ferguson, Roderick A. One-Dimensional Queer. Polity Press, 2019.
- Ferguson, Roderick A. Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique. University of Minnesota Press, 2004.
- Ferguson, Roderick A. and Grace Kyungwon Hong. Strange Affinities: The Gender and Sexual Politics of Comparative Racialization. Duke University Press, 2011.
- Foucault, Michel, and Paul Rabinow. The Foucault Reader. Vintage Books, 2010.
- Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Vintage Books, 1988.
- Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia, 10th Anniversary Edition: the Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York University Press, 2019.
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Muñoz, José Esteban. The Sense of Brown. Duke University Press, 2020.
- Muñoz, José Esteban. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
- Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. Columbia University Press, 1985.
- Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. University of California Press, 2008.
- Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Duke University Press, 2003.
- Snorton, C. Riley. Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity. University of Minnesota Press, 2017.
- Snorton, C. Riley. Nobody Is Supposed to Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low. University of Minnesota Press, 2014.
- Treva Ellison, Kai M. Green, Matt Richardson, C. Riley Snorton. We Got Issues: Toward a Black Trans*/Studies. TSQ, vol. 4, no. 2, 2017, pp. 162–69.
Introductions & Anthologies
Black Queer Studies: A Critical AnthologyContributors: Bryant K. Alexander, Devon Carbado, Faedra Chatard Carpenter, Keith Clark, Cathy Cohen, Roderick A. Ferguson, Jewelle Gomez, Phillip Brian Harper, Mae G. Henderson, Sharon P. Holland, E. Patrick Johnson, Kara Keeling, Dwight A. McBride, Charles I. Nero, Marlon B. Ross, Rinaldo Walcott, Maurice O. Wallace
Foucault: A Very Short IntroductionIn this Very Short Introduction Gary Gutting presents a wide-ranging but non-systematic exploration of some highlights of Foucault's life and thought. See more scholar-recommended sources on Michel Foucault via Oxford Bibliographies.
Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in FictionNovel Gazing is the first collection of queer criticism on the history of the novel... The startlingly imaginative essays in the volume explore new critical practices that can weave the pleasures and disorientations of reading into the fabric of queer analyses.
The Routledge Queer Studies ReaderThe Routledge Queer Studies Reader provides a comprehensive resource for students and scholars working in this vibrant and interdisciplinary field. The book traces the emergence and development of Queer Studies as a field of scholarship, presenting key critical essays alongside more recent criticism that explores new directions
The Transgender Studies ReaderThe Transgender Studies Reader puts between two covers fifty influential texts with new introductions by the editors that, taken together, document the evolution of transgender studies in the English-speaking world.
The Transgender Studies Reader RemixOutstanding range of curated materials showing the development of transgender studies. Includes historical perspective from 1910 up to the latest research.
Also see other recent eBooks discussing or using queer theory in literature.
Definition from: "Gay Theory and Criticism: 3. Queer Theory" in The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism, 2nd. ed. 2005.