Queer Ideas: The David R. Kessler Lectures, 1992-2001
An essential text documenting the foundation and rise of queer theory.
The David R. Kessler Lectures, established in 1992 by CLAGS: Center for LGBTQ Studies at CUNY, represent the cutting edge of queer studies in the United States. Years before LGBTQ studies had found a foothold in American academia, the Kessler Lectures celebrated dynamic and diverse inquiries into queer thought, community, and politics.
Twenty years after its initial publication, Queer Ideas collects the first ten historic Kessler Lectures by influential scholars, writers, and activists including Cherríe Moraga, Samuel R. Delany, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Barbara Smith, with a new foreword by CLAGS Executive Director Matt Brim and Board Co-Chairs James Harris and Laura Westengard. Alongside the second volume, Queer Then and Now: The David R. Kessler Lectures, 2002-2020, this revised edition of Queer Ideas traces the early foundations of the field and provides a new opportunity to revisit an essential collection of queer and trans thought.
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"This book is sharp, clear, and terrifically moving: the book's introduction and contributors remind us of the centrality of articulation to the project of liberation. We have written our way out of the depths of oppression and we have a long, long way to go." --Tony Kushner, author of Angels in America
"Rarely can you see history being made. With this book, you will see an outrageous idea--LGBTQ studies, queer studies--happen before your eyes. You will see here how it grows, with new insights being created, criticized, dreamed, defended, remade. By the end of this book you will understand why it remains so vital and animated and insistent. And why it continues to go forward." --Amber Hollibaugh, author of My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home
"Brave and brilliant, fabulous and deep, these ten visionary thinkers teach us how queer ideas can and must and do reshape the world." --David L. Eng, author of Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America
"These essays explore how LGBTQ people at once belong and transform, how we are both central to and distinct from the mainstream in US society. The result is an eloquent, fresh book." --Urvashi Vaid, author of Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation
