Ryan Lee Cartwright
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780226696911
- eISBN:
- 9780226697079
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226697079.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
This book examines a queer disability history of rural whiteness in the US. Using insights from queer history, disability studies, the history of sexuality, and crip theory, the book reads against ...
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This book examines a queer disability history of rural whiteness in the US. Using insights from queer history, disability studies, the history of sexuality, and crip theory, the book reads against the grain of the anti-idyll—an optic that focuses on degeneracy and deviance in white rural America--by focusing on the mundane and the material. The book contributes disability and working-class perspectives to rural queer studies. It examines how vernacular and colloquial descriptions of white rural social nonconformity—such as odd, eccentric, and queer—intertwined nonheteronormative sexuality and gender nonconformity; mental and physical disability; and poverty, welfare, and economic estrangement. It also studies how local gossip circulated nationally and regionally. The first chapter focuses on eugenic family studies and the idea of feeblemindedness, considering how gossip was nationalized during the Progressive Era. Chapter two examines New Deal photography from the Great Depression, focusing on Farm Security Administration (FSA) photos of gender nonconforming farmers, a disabled bachelor lumberjack retirement home in Minnesota, and a saloon singer—and likely lesbian—on the Nebraska frontier. Chapter 3 studies Ed Gein, the real inspiration for Norman Bates, through formations of transgender, madness, and race. Chapter 4 turns to Appalachia, examining the War on Poverty, poverty tours, welfare, nerves, and culture of poverty discourse. Chapter 5 analyzes 1970s horror films such as Deliverance and Texas Chain Saw Massacre, studying deindustrialization, disability, and gender nonconformity. Lastly, chapter 6 focuses on hate crime documentaries of the 1990s like The Brandon Teena Story and Brother’s Keeper.Less
This book examines a queer disability history of rural whiteness in the US. Using insights from queer history, disability studies, the history of sexuality, and crip theory, the book reads against the grain of the anti-idyll—an optic that focuses on degeneracy and deviance in white rural America--by focusing on the mundane and the material. The book contributes disability and working-class perspectives to rural queer studies. It examines how vernacular and colloquial descriptions of white rural social nonconformity—such as odd, eccentric, and queer—intertwined nonheteronormative sexuality and gender nonconformity; mental and physical disability; and poverty, welfare, and economic estrangement. It also studies how local gossip circulated nationally and regionally. The first chapter focuses on eugenic family studies and the idea of feeblemindedness, considering how gossip was nationalized during the Progressive Era. Chapter two examines New Deal photography from the Great Depression, focusing on Farm Security Administration (FSA) photos of gender nonconforming farmers, a disabled bachelor lumberjack retirement home in Minnesota, and a saloon singer—and likely lesbian—on the Nebraska frontier. Chapter 3 studies Ed Gein, the real inspiration for Norman Bates, through formations of transgender, madness, and race. Chapter 4 turns to Appalachia, examining the War on Poverty, poverty tours, welfare, nerves, and culture of poverty discourse. Chapter 5 analyzes 1970s horror films such as Deliverance and Texas Chain Saw Massacre, studying deindustrialization, disability, and gender nonconformity. Lastly, chapter 6 focuses on hate crime documentaries of the 1990s like The Brandon Teena Story and Brother’s Keeper.
Stephen Vider
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780226808192
- eISBN:
- 9780226808222
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226808222.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
From the Stonewall riots to the protests of ACT UP, histories of queer and trans politics have almost exclusively centered on public activism. The Queerness of Home turns the focus inward, showing ...
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From the Stonewall riots to the protests of ACT UP, histories of queer and trans politics have almost exclusively centered on public activism. The Queerness of Home turns the focus inward, showing that the intimacy of domestic space has been equally crucial to the history of postwar LGBTQ life. Beginning in the 1940s, LGBTQ activists looked increasingly to the home as a site of connection, care, and cultural inclusion. They struggled against the conventions of marriage, challenged the gendered codes of everyday labor, reimagined domestic architecture, and contested the racial and class boundaries of kinship and belonging. This history both shaped and was shaped by the changing social and political stakes of privacy in the United States. Early LGBTQ activists viewed the home as a zone of privacy, a space that provided relative protection from the surveillance of neighbors and the state. Yet by the 1990s, LGBTQ activists increasingly came to see the state as an ally in protecting the everyday practices, privileges, and rights that domestic space was presumed to secure. LGBTQ activists no longer saw the home as a haven from the state, but rather a haven protected by the state. Retelling LGBTQ history from the inside out, The Queerness of Home reveals the surprising ways that the home became, and remains, a charged space in battles for social and economic justice, making it clear that LGBTQ people not only realized new forms of community and culture for themselves—they remade the possibilities of home life for everyone.Less
From the Stonewall riots to the protests of ACT UP, histories of queer and trans politics have almost exclusively centered on public activism. The Queerness of Home turns the focus inward, showing that the intimacy of domestic space has been equally crucial to the history of postwar LGBTQ life. Beginning in the 1940s, LGBTQ activists looked increasingly to the home as a site of connection, care, and cultural inclusion. They struggled against the conventions of marriage, challenged the gendered codes of everyday labor, reimagined domestic architecture, and contested the racial and class boundaries of kinship and belonging. This history both shaped and was shaped by the changing social and political stakes of privacy in the United States. Early LGBTQ activists viewed the home as a zone of privacy, a space that provided relative protection from the surveillance of neighbors and the state. Yet by the 1990s, LGBTQ activists increasingly came to see the state as an ally in protecting the everyday practices, privileges, and rights that domestic space was presumed to secure. LGBTQ activists no longer saw the home as a haven from the state, but rather a haven protected by the state. Retelling LGBTQ history from the inside out, The Queerness of Home reveals the surprising ways that the home became, and remains, a charged space in battles for social and economic justice, making it clear that LGBTQ people not only realized new forms of community and culture for themselves—they remade the possibilities of home life for everyone.