Lawler Literature 001: Lesbian and Gay Studies

Today my online bookstore, Lawler Books, sold The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader.

This is actually a textbook I used often as an undergraduate (witness my rather destructive ink notes, highlighter blitzes, and coffee dribbles all over the pages). It contains articles written by many, many smart people from the LGBTQ community, including Judith Butler, Sue-Ellen Case, Marilyn Frye, Marjorie Garber, David M. Halperin, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and John J. Winkler. I am sad to give it up, but it is hefty as hell and I no longer have shelf space for it.

If you are at all interested in Queer Theory, you should obtain and metaphorically devour the following essays:

Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Sexual Indifference and Lesbian Representation,Teresa de Lauretis

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence, Adrienne Rich (Full text at the link!)

The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power, Audre Lorde (Another full text at the link!)

Based on these pieces, I wrote research papers with such turgid, gerund-laden titles as “Boundaries and Bodies: Manufacturing Difference and Attacking the ‘Other’” and “Disrupting Reproduction: Dysfunctional Mothers in Irish Culture”

Oh, college.