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In addition to the e-books available here, you'll find a selection of paper books in the University Library.
Check the Theme Cabinet in the stairwell on the second floor.
Core reads
Beyond the gender binary
Poet, artist, and LGBTQIA+ rights advocate Alok Vaid-Menon deconstructs, demystifies, and reimagines the gender binary.
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Trans (but Were Afraid to Ask)
Leading activist and essayist Brynn Tannehill tells you everything you ever wanted to know about transgender issues but were afraid to ask. The book aims to break down deeply held misconceptions about trans people across all aspects of life, from politics, law and culture, through to science, religion and mental health, to provide readers with a deeper understanding of what it means to be trans. This important and engaging book enables any reader to become informed the most critical public conversations around transgender people, and become a better ally as a result.
Gender optics - a novel
What if normative gender standards were legally enforced? How would our institutions inform and enforce these rules and regulations? What would be the consequences of failing to comply with gender expression standards? It's in the midst of this maelstrom that we join Alex, our genderfluid and nonbinary protagonist who, during the thick of their adolescence, must navigate the choppy waters of lust, love, friendship, schooling, loss, and their city's rigid - and perhaps lethal - gender expectations. Can they navigate this slippery slope, alongside their patchwork community of friends and allies? Or is arrest and social persecution inevitable? This novel is an honest and raw examination of queer lives.
Genderqueer and non-binary genders
This book addresses the emerging field of genderqueer or non-binary genders - that is, individuals who do not identify as male or female. It considers theoretical, research, practice, and activist perspectives; and outlines a basis for good practice when working with non-binary individuals. This work will appeal to a wide readership, from practitioners working with non-binary individuals - including psychologists, surgeons, social workers, nurses, psychiatrists, endocrinologists, psychotherapists and counselors, lawyers, and healthcare workers - to researchers interested in the study of gender identities, to students and gender activists.
Life Isn't Binary
Much of society's thinking operates in a highly rigid and binary manner; something is good or bad, right or wrong, a success or a failure, and so on. Challenging this limited way of thinking, this book looks at how non-binary methods of thought can be applied to all aspects of life, and offer new and greater ways of understanding ourselves and how we relate to others. Using bisexual and non-binary gender experiences as a starting point, this book addresses the key issues with binary thinking regarding our relationships, bodies, emotions, wellbeing and our sense of identity and sets out a range of practices which may help us to think in more non-binary, both/and, or uncertain ways.
Nonbinary
The powerful first-person narratives of this collection show us a world where gender exists along a spectrum, a web, a multidimensional space. Nuanced storytellers break away from mainstream portrayals of gender diversity, cutting across lines of age, race, ethnicity, ability, class, religion, family, and relationships. From Suzi, who wonders whether she'll ever "feel" like a woman after living fifty years as a man, to Aubri, who grew up in a cash-strapped fundamentalist household, to Sand, who must reconcile the dual roles of trans advocate and therapist, the writers' conceptions of gender are inextricably intertwined with broader systemic issues. Labeled gender outlaws, gender rebels, genderqueer, or simply human, the voices in Nonbinary illustrate what life could be if we allowed the rigid categories of "man" and "woman" to loosen and bend.
The Guide to LGBTQ+ Research
A practical and accessible guide that researchers will draw on time and time again, The Guide to LGBTQ+ Research has at its heart, a commitment to inclusivity. Following the conventions of a doctoral thesis and drawing on the expertise of almost 40 contributors from the field of LGBTQ+ research, this guide offers invaluable support to anyone undertaking research with LGBTQ+ participants. Contributors include a range of experienced academics, early career researchers, research supervisors and doctoral students working in the UK and internationally. Together their vast and diverse voices combine to create a network of support for anyone undertaking LGBTQ+ research.
The Reflective Workbook for Teachers and Support Staff of Trans and Non-Binary Students
This book discusses the unique needs of teachers and schools as they navigate supporting the gender journeys of their transgender, non-binary, or gender questioning students by enabling staff to identify, understand, and incorporate the needs of this population. The chapters of this essential resource offer guidance on how to implement appropriate school policies and inclusive curriculum, learn topical terminology, address bullying, and develop bathroom guidelines. This book will help school staff ensure that students feel safe, included, and respected, while creating a judgment-free space for teachers, support staff, and administrators' own self-exploration as they embark on the process of acquiring new and relevant information.
Trans: gender and race in an age of unsettled identities
Taking the controversial pairing of "transgender" and "transracial" as his starting point, Rogers Brubaker shows how gender and race, long understood as stable, inborn, and unambiguous, have in the past few decades opened up--in different ways and to different degrees--to the forces of change and choice. At a critical time when gender and race are being reimagined and reconstructed, Trans explores fruitful new paths for thinking about identity.
Trans Power
In this radical and emotionally raw book, Juno Roche pushes the boundaries of trans representation by redefining 'trans' as an identity with its own power and strength, that goes beyond the gender binary. Through intimate conversations with leading and influential figures in the trans community, such as Kate Bornstein, Travis Alabanza, Josephine Jones, Glamrou and E-J Scott, this book highlights the diversity of trans identities and experiences with regard to love, bodies, sex, race and class, and urges trans people - and the world at large - to embrace a 'trans' identity as something that offers empowerment and autonomy.
Trans/Portraits
Although transgender people are increasingly represented in academic studies and popular culture, they rarely have the opportunity to add their own voices to the conversation. In this remarkable book, Jackson Shultz records the stories of more than thirty Americans who identify as transgender. From historical descriptions of activism to personal stories of discrimination, love, and community, these touching accounts of gender transition shed light on the uncharted territories that lie beyond the gender binary.
Uncomfortable Labels
In this candid, first-of-its-kind memoir, Laura Kate Dale recounts what life is like growing up as a gay trans woman on the autism spectrum. From struggling with sensory processing, managing socially demanding situations and learning social cues and feminine presentation, through to coming out as trans during an autistic meltdown, Laura draws on her personal experiences from life prior to transition and diagnosis, and moving on to the years of self-discovery, to give a unique insight into the nuances of sexuality, gender and autism, and how they intersect. Charting the ups and downs of being autistic and on the LGBT spectrum with searing honesty and humour, this is an empowering, life-affirming read for anyone who's felt they don't fit in.
You Better Be Lightning
You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson is a queer, political, and feminist collection guided by self-reflection. The poems range from close examination of the deeply personal to the vastness of the world, exploring the expansiveness of the human experience from love to illness, from space to climate change, and so much more in between. One of the most celebrated poets and performers of the last two decades, Andrea Gibson's trademark honesty and vulnerability are on full display in You Better Be Lightning, welcoming and inviting readers to be just as they are.
Wellbeing & Mental Health
Trans love: an anthology of transgender and non-binary voices
An anthology of writing on the topic of love, written by trans and non-binary people who share their thoughts, feelings and experiences of love in all its guises. The collection spans familial, romantic, spiritual and self-love as well as friendships and ally love, to provide a broad and honest understanding of how trans people navigate love and relationships, and what love means to them.
Headcase: LGBTQ writers & artists on mental health and wellness
A collection of personal reflections and artistic representations illustrating the intersection of mental wellness, illness, and LGBTQ identity, as well as the lasting impact of historical views equating queer and trans identity with mental illness. The pieces offer personal views from both providers and clients, often one and the same, about their experiences. In the anthology, readers will access the inner thoughts of an array of individuals.
A Recent History of Lesbian and Gay Psychology
This book explores the contemporary history of how psychological research, practice, and theory has engaged with gay and lesbian movements in the United States and beyond, over the last 50 years. A Recent History of Lesbian and Gay Psychology will serve as an advanced historical introduction to this field's recent history and current concerns, and will inform both those who have been a part of this history and students who are new to the field.
The trans generation: how trans kids (and their parents) are creating a gender revolution
Based on interviews with transgender kids, ranging in age from 4 to 20, and their parents, and over five years of research in the US and Canada, The Trans Generation offers a rare look into what it is like to grow up as a trans child. From daycare to birthday parties and from the playground to the school bathroom, Travers takes the reader inside the day-to-day realities of trans kids who regularly experience crisis as a result of the restrictive ways in which sex categories regulate their lives and put pressure on them to deny their internal sense of who they are in gendered terms.
Relationally queer a pink therapy guide for practitioners
Relationally Queer explores diverse intimate relationship styles and the connections with self for clinician's interested in Gender, Sex and Relationship Diversity. Offering readers a more inclusive and queer-friendly way of thinking about relationships, the book covers a range of topics that include intersectionality, consensual non-monogamy, working with shame and religious identities. Exploring beyond a eurocentric perspective, the book features a chapter on African-centred therapy and also includes the relationships of often erased populations such as bisexual people, sex workers, and trans people.
Sexually and Gender Diverse Adolescents
This book explores adolescent experiences extending to countries worldwide where issues related to LGBTQ+ rights, adolescent mental health, and social acceptance are of concern. It not only uncovers the intricate world of sexually and gender-diverse adolescents and the complexities of resilience, risk, and critical perspectives, but it also explores health and wellbeing, generational dynamics, societal norms, globalization, and transformative pedagogy.
The Trans Guide to Mental Health and Well-Being
This empowering self-help guide provides advice and strategies for trans and/or non-binary people on a range of common mental health issues including anxiety, depression, body image, trauma, suicidal thoughts and dissociation. It provides advice on neutralising negative thoughts, coping with transphobia, coming out, dealing with imposter syndrome, and implementing achievable self-care strategies and mindfulness techniques. This book also highlights the importance of understanding and being proud of who you are, to help you live life to the fullest.
Politics and Activism
Global LGBTQ Activism
Focused on understanding and analyzing LGBTQ activism and protest globally, this edited collection brings together voices from different parts of the world to examine LGBTQ protests and their impact. Through the lens of media, culture, and sociopolitical structures, this collection highlights how cultural and technical factors like the emergence of social media and other digital platforms have impacted LGBTQ activism.
Organizing for Transgender Rights
This book illuminates transgender activists' successful strategies to organize for social and political change in the US. Drawing on firsthand accounts from the founders and leaders of transgender rights interests groups, Organizing for Transgender Rights not only addresses how these groups mobilized and survived but also illuminates a path to further social change. Nownes shows how oppressed and marginalized people can overcome the barriers to collective action and form viable organizations to represent their interests even when their government continues to be hostile and does not.
Rainbow trap : queer lives, classifications and the dangers of inclusion
Rainbow Trap documents how inclusive interventions - such as new legislation, revamped diversity policies and tech fixes - have attempted to bring historically marginalized communities out of the shadows. Yet, as part of the bargain, LGBTQ people need to locate themselves in an ever-growing list of classifications, categories and labels to 'make sense' to the very systems they are seeking to access. This requirement to be classified catches LGBTQ communities in a rainbow trap. Because when we look beyond the welcoming veneer of inclusive interventions, we uncover sorting processes that determine what LGBTQ lives are valued and what queer futures are possible.
Tolerable inequality: understanding public policy and LGBTQ+ politics
Pepin-Neff coins the term 'Tolerable Inequality' to examine the ways in which politicians and political actors use the policy process as a tool to make inequality acceptable as a way of keeping power and avoiding penalties. Power is built on the illusion of differences. This book explores this concept within the context of LGBTQ+ policy and presents frameworks that allow the public to engage in the policy process in ways that highlight the role of expected political penalties in order to reclaim policymaking in the public interest.
Trans rights and wrong
A comparative study of legal reform concerning trans persons.
What world is this? A pandemic phenomenology
Whether we start from the pandemic, climate change, the inequality engendered by capitalism, the violence of racism and sexism, or any of a number of global crises, it is apparent that we are far from any idea of a common world, a world that is a site of belonging. Such a world would require a fundamental transformation of how we understand value--that everyone's life has value beyond market value and that the world is structured to facilitate everyone's flourishing. Such a world requires, too, the upending and reorientation of everyone's epistemic field, one's very sense of the limit and structure of the world, in order to apprehend the worlds of others and to find connection.
Art & Expression
Editing for Sensitivity, Diversity and Inclusion
Editing for Sensitivity, Diversity and Inclusion is a guide for professional editors, providing evidence-based definitions, recommendations and support for emerging and experienced editors working with fiction and non-fiction genres.
Expanding the parameters of feminist artivism
This book explores the work and careers of women, trans, and third-gender artists engaged in political activism. While some artists negotiated their own political status in their Indigenous communities, others responded to global issues of military dictatorship, racial discrimination, or masculine privilege in regions other than their own. The book argues that solidarity among artists remains valuable and empowering for those who still seek legitimate recognition in art schools, cultural institutions, and the history curriculum.
Global Literature and Gender
Offering a thorough introduction to notions of gender in contemporary global literature, Global Literature and Gender uses postcolonial theories alongside theories of space and place, theories of globalization, and reference to the Posthuman and the Anthropocene as competing narratives of the contemporary.
Youth Fiction and Trans Representation
This book addresses the growth of trans and gender variant representation in literature, television, and films for children and young adults in the twenty-first century. Ranging across an array of media--including picture books, novels, graphic novels, animated cartoons, and live-action television and feature films--Youth Fiction and Trans Representation examines how youth texts are addressing and contributing to ongoing shifts in understandings of gender in the new millennium.
Trans and Gender Diverse Voices in Libraries
In the library profession, and in the world as a whole, the experiences of trans and gender diverse people often go unnoticed, hidden, and ignored. But we are here. It is our hope that this book will help trans and gender diverse people in libraries realize that they are not alone, and that their experiences are worth sharing. You cannot read these chapters and claim that Safe Zone stickers and 'libraries are for everyone' signs have done the job. You cannot assume that everything is fine in your workplace because nobody has spoken out. You can no longer pretend that we don’t exist.
Sex and gender in Pop/Rock music: the Blues through the Beatles to Beyoncé
This book discusses the gendered performances and biographical experiences of individual musicians, including Patti Smith, Rufus Wainwright, Etta James, and Frank Ocean, and how their invented personae contribute to musical representations of sexuality. It evaluates lyric structure and symbolic language of these artists, and overall emphasizes how pop music, while a commodity art form, reflects the diversity of human sex and gender.
Reflections on female and trans* masculinities and other queer crossings
This collection of essays emerged out of the Agender conference, and various queer cultural activities associated with the PoMoGaze project (Leeds Art Gallery, 2013-2015). PoMoGaze was a term created to promote queer co-curatorial projects held at the gallery as part of Community Engagement activities, and references 'PoMo' as a shortening of 'Postmodern' combined with 'Gaze' as a play on words linking the act of looking with LGBT*IQ activities. The book presents many voices exploring themes of female and trans* masculinities, gender equality, and the lives, work and activism of LGBT*IQ artists.
Queering the Stage
This book will guide the reader in performance techniques for confidently embodying the masculine/ feminine, gay/ straight binaries - as concepts of chosen choreography rather than reductive prescriptions - while also providing non- binary exercises to explore and expand the use of the body, voice, heart, and mind to bring life to characters of sexual orientations and gender identities that do and do not align with the actors' lived experiences. The reader will be presented with multiple tools for analyzing, developing, and embodying a diverse array of characters, empowering them to make their own choices when it comes to performance.
Queer Methodology for Photography
This book presents new ways of approaching photographic discourse from a queer perspective, offering discussions on what a queering methodology for photography may entail by drawing links between artistic strategies in photographic practice and key theoretical concepts from photography theory, queer theory, critical theory, and philosophy. With different examples of conceptual perspectives, including representation, formalism, and mediumlessness, it seeks to diversify queer methodology for photography.
Queer Art
Celebrate the LGBTQI+ community with this vivid collection of artworks that charts queer voices from around the world. With nearly 200 artworks selected by leading LGBTQI+ curator Gemma Rolls-Bentley, this book mixes the high-brow with the low, gallery stalwarts with Instagram stars, and the racy with the fabulous. This is a unique celebration of queer life - a must-have for the LGBTQI+ community, art lovers and anyone interested in the culture surrounding queer identity.
Poetics of Disturbances
This volume calls for a Narratology of Diversity by investigating narratives of non-normative bodies and minds. It explores mental health representations in literature, including n euro diversity, the body-mind nexus, and embodied non-normativities, therein emphasizing the importance of understanding diverse psychological conditions as represented in narratives. The contributions include perspectives from a wide variety of scholars of European, North American, and comparative literature and culture.
Museums Sexuality and Gender Activism
Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activismexamines the role of exhibitionary institutions in representing LGBTQ+ people, cisgender women, and nonbinary individuals. Chapters cover diverse topics, including transgender representation, erasure, and activism; two-spirit people, indigeneity, and museums; third genders; gender and sexuality in heritage sites and historic homes; temporary exhibitions on gender and sexuality; museum representations of HIV/AIDS; interventions to increase queer visibility and inclusion in galleries; LGBTQ+ staff alliances; and museums, gender ambiguity, and the disruption of binaries.
Made up: a History of Identity and Gender Expression Through Makeup and Style
This book explores historical and modern uses of makeup for self-expression, with a focus on gender. The book begins by exploring the historical influences in the origins and development of makeup across genders, providing a whistle-stop tour of gendered adornment through time. The chapters that follow explore more specific topics that provide context for a range of influences on self-expression: Sex, gender and identity, including introductory gender theory and terminology relevant to the topic.
History & Culture
Behind the Mask
The image of biologically male people dancing while dressed in the traditional, colorful attire of Zapotec, Juchiteca, females stands in sharp contrast to the prevailing view of Mexico as the land of charros, machismo, and unbridled ranchero masculinity. These indigenous people are called los muxes, and they are neither man nor woman, but rather a hybrid third gender. This book challenges the ideology of a male-dominated Mexican society driven by the cult of machismo. Mirandé compares traditional Mexicano/Latino conceptions of gender and sexuality to modern or Western object choice configurations. He concludes by proposing a new hybrid model for rethinking these seemingly contradictory and conflicting gender systems.
Byzantine Intersectionality
A fascinating history of marginalized identities in the medieval world While the term "intersectionality" was coined in 1989, the existence of marginalized identities extends back over millennia. Byzantine Intersectionality reveals the fascinating, little-examined conversations in medieval thought and visual culture around sexual and reproductive consent, bullying and slut-shaming, homosocial and homoerotic relationships, trans and nonbinary gender identities, and the depiction of racialized minorities.
Choosing love: what LGBTQ+ Christians can teach us all about relationships, inclusion and justice
Choosing Love shows what happens when two identities seem diametrically opposed - conservative Christian and LGBTQ+ - are joined together within one person. The book shows how some LGBTQ+ Christians and their heterosexual/cisgender allies are working to make their families, churches, and communities more inclusive, loving, and just. These stories expose the brutality of treating shame as a special sacrament for LGBTQ+ people and the toxicity of treating a particular construction of gender as sacred. They teach us the difference between arrogance and relational pride, and that humility is the core of true allyship.
Queer Devotion
A liberating exploration of the queer divine in deities and figures of myth and legend that opens pathways for LGBTQIA+ people to revere the divinity within and create an affirming spiritual practice. With exercises, reflection prompts, and ritual suggestions, readers can discover a deeper spiritual relationship with themselves and the divine and begin building an affirming personal practice of self-defined queer devotion. From gay Greek gods to genderfluid Norse ones, from transgender Catholic saints to queer Arthurian legends, Queer Devotion reveals that spirituality has always been far queerer than we've been led to believe. In the beginning, the gods were queer--and they still are.
LGBTQ+ Intimacies in Southern Europe
This Open Access book argues that Southern European countries offer valuable, though historically overlooked, knowledge regarding intimate citizenship. Guided by the fundamental sociological question of how change takes place and, concomitantly, how law and social policy adjust to and/or shape the practices and expectations of individuals in the sphere of intimacy, this edited volume explores partnering, parenting and friendship issues from the perspective of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer people in Italy, Portugal and Spain.
The Routledge Handbook of Heritage and Gender
Taking an intersectional and global approach, the Handbook opens up space for a more critical and situated consideration of how gender comes into contact with heritage as a concept and practice. The volume considers heritage in the broadest sense: as a concept, performance, and materialisation. The volume and its contributions are inclusive of cisgender, trans, non-binary, agender, and intersex identities. Reflecting the multidisciplinary and transnational voices of its authors, the collection challenges readers to consider what a focused analysis of heritage and gender can offer heritage studies as an evolving discipline and field of study.
Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography
Scholarship has productively combined analysis of medieval literary texts with modern queer theory - yet, too often, questions of gender are explored almost exclusively through a prism of sexuality, rather than gender identity. This volume moves beyond such limitations, foregrounding the richness of hagiography as a genre integrally resistant to limiting binaristic categories, including rigid gender binaries. The collection showcases scholarship by emerging trans and genderqueer authors, as well as the work of established researchers. Working at the vanguard of historical trans studies, these scholars demonstrate the vital and vitally political nature of their work as medievalists.
Trans Historical: Gender Plurality before the Modern
Trans Historical explores the plurality of gender experiences that flourished before the modern era, from Late Antiquity to the eighteenth century, across a broad geographic range, from Spain to Poland and Byzantium to Boston. Refuting arguments that transgender people, experiences, and identities were non-existent or even impossible prior to the twentieth century, this volume focuses on archives--literary texts, trial transcripts, documents, and artifacts--that denaturalize gender as a category. The volume historicizes the many different social lives of sexual differentiation, exploring what gender might have been before modern medicine, the anatomical sciences, and the sedimentation of gender difference into its putatively binary form.
Transgender and Non-Binary People in Everyday Sport
This formative work discusses transgender people's inclusion in everyday sport in the United Kingdom. It adopts a trans feminist approach to explore pivotal issues regarding the barriers to participation faced by transgender and non-binary people. Offering a critical perspective on the current landscape surrounding this topic, the book draws from insightful interviews conducted by the author with 18 transgender and non-binary individuals.
This Arab is queer : an anthology by LGBTQ+ Arab writers
This ground-breaking anthology features the compelling and courageous memoirs of eighteen queer Arab writers - some internationally bestselling, others using pseudonyms. Here, we find heart-warming connections and moments of celebration alongside essays exploring the challenges of being LGBTQ+ and Arab. From a military base in the Gulf to loving whispers caught between the bedsheets; and from touring overseas as a drag queen to a concert in Cairo where the rainbow flag was raised to a crowd of thousands, this collection celebrates the true colours of a vibrant Arab queer experience.
How Sex Changed
How Sex Changed is a fascinating social, cultural and medical history of transsexuality in the United States. Joanne Meyerowitz tells a powerful human story about people who had a deep and unshakable desire to transform their bodily sex. In the last century when many challenged the social categories and hierarchies of race, class and gender, transsexuals questioned biological sex itself, the category that seemed most fundamental and fixed of all.