Researching Gender and Sexuality Studies
Gender and Sexuality Studies Scholars
Below is a list of a selection of scholars who have made significant contributions to the fields of Gender and Sexuality studies. You will probably see their names referenced in your research!
- Judith Butler
- Michel Foucault
- Audre Lorde
- Jack Halberstam
- Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
- Dean Spade
- Susan Stryker
- C. Riley Snorton
- bell hooks
- Afsaneh Najmabadi
- Sylvia Federici
Library Resources
Recommended Databases
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
(Ebsco) Periodical database. This multi-disciplinary database covers most disciplines taught at TCC. Most articles are scholarly. - Ethnic Diversity Source This link opens in a new window
(Ebsco) Covers the culture, traditions, social treatment, and lived experiences of ethnic groups in the United States, with peer-reviewed journals, magazines, e-books, biographies, and primary source documents. - Social Work Reference Center This link opens in a new window
Covers a wide array of topics, such as adolescent health, aging, end-of-life care, clinical social work and diversity. - JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Full text of a range of academic journal articles and primary sources. TCC's collection includes: "Archival Journal / Primary Source Collections." Good coverage of history, sociology, anthropology, literature, and economics. All images from Artstor are now on JSTOR! - Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition This link opens in a new window
(Ebsco) Coverage of nursing and allied health topics, including pediatric nursing, critical care, mental health, nursing management, medical law and more. - PsycARTICLES This link opens in a new window
(Also known as APA PsycARTICLES).(Ebsco) Periodical database of peer-reviewed, scholarly, and scientific articles in psychology.
Recommended Journals
- The Gay and Lesbian ReviewThe Gay & Lesbian Review / Worldwide (The G&LR) is a bimonthly magazine of history, culture, and politics targeting an educated readership of LGBT people, and their allies that publishes essays in a wide range of disciplines as well as reviews of books, movies, and plays.
- Gender and SocietyGender and Society promotes feminist scholarship and the social scientific study of gender. Gender and Society publishes theoretically engaged and methodologically rigorous articles that make original contributions to gender theory. The journal takes a multidisciplinary, intersectional, and global approach to gender analyses.
- Journal of Gender StudiesThe Journal of Gender Studies is an interdisciplinary journal which publishes articles relating to gender and sex from a feminist perspective covering a wide range of subject areas including the Social, Natural and Health Sciences, the Arts, Humanities, Literature and Popular Culture.
- Gender IssuesGender Issues is interdisciplinary and cross-national in scope focusing on gender and gender equity. The journal publishes basic and applied research examining gender relationships as well as the impact of economic, legal, political, and social forces on those relationships.
Brainstorming Keywords
How to brainstorm:
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State your research question/topic
- Example: "What are some challenges transgender people face in getting access to gender-affirming healthcare?"
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Extract main concepts:
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CONCEPT #1 CONCEPT #2 CONCEPT #3 transgender (people) healthcare obstacles
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Brainstorm key words:
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CONCEPT #1 CONCEPT #2 CONCEPT #3 BRAINSTORM KEYWORDS transgender
trans
trans*
transgender people
non-binary
gender non-conforming
TGNC
trans women
trans men
healthcare
gender-affirming care
hormone therapy
estrogen
testosterone
surgery
top surgery
obstacles
health insurance
intolerance
bigotry
informed consent
transphobia
medical transphobia
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Keywords can be:
- synonyms
- related terms
- broader ideas
- narrower ideas
- alternate spellings
- specific examples
- abbreviations or acronyms
If you need help identifying acronyms, abbreviations, and related terms, check out the LGBTQIA2S+ page on this guide!
A Note on Keyword Searching in Gender and Sexuality Studies
The field of Gender and Sexuality Studies is an interdisciplinary one, meaning it draws from multiple disciplines. When you are researching for gender or sexuality-specific resources within another discipline, you’ll likely need to do an advanced search that contains two or more keyword searches. For example, if you are interested in researching about the importance of healthcare access for transgender people, you may try searching for: [transgender AND healthcare]. Or [transgender AND “gender affirming care”]. If you are interested in researching Black queer authors and literature, you might try searching: [Black AND queer AND literature] or [Black AND gay AND literature]. Because there are many words included in the various LGBTQIA2S+ acronyms, it’s important to try searches using different identity terms. If there is a specific subgroup of people you are interested in including in your research, be sure to use specific terms, and pay attention to the terms used in the results you get—there may be synonymous terms for various identities (for example, “sapphic” was a common synonym for “lesbian.” Some use “two spirit,” and some use “2 spirit,” while others may use terms like “queer Native Americans”). If you need help identifying synonyms or keywords, reach out to Gender and Sexuality Studies liaison Librarian Olli Toppeta, visit the Research Desk in the Library in Building 7, or use our 24/7 Ask A Librarian chat!
Featured Books & eBooks
The electronic and print books listed below are a small selection of well-regarded and/or canonical texts in the field of gender and sexuality studies. This means that they have been particularly unique, influential, or otherwise formative for the field. Many works have been inspired by these books. Whether you are just getting started in understanding the field or researching specific topics, these books (and their citations!) have something for every need.
Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of gender by
One of the most talked-about scholarly works of the past fifty years, Judith Butler's Gender Trouble is as celebrated as it is controversial. Arguing that traditional feminism is wrong to look to a natural, 'essential' notion of the female, or indeed of sex or gender, Butler starts by questioning the category 'woman' and continues in this vein with examinations of 'the masculine' and 'the feminine'. Best known however, but also most often misinterpreted, is Butler's concept of gender as a reiterated social performance rather than the expression of a prior reality. Thrilling and provocative, few other academic works have roused passions to the same extent.
Call Number: OnlinePublication Date: 1990
Queer Latinidad: Identity practices, discursive spaces by
An examination into queer identity in relation to Latino America. According to the 2000 census, Latinos/as/es have become the largest ethnic minority group in the United States. Images of Latinos/as/es in mainstream news and in popular culture suggest a Latin Explosion at center stage, yet the topic of queer identity in relation to Latino America remains under examined. Juana María Rodríguez attempts to rectify this dearth of scholarship in Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces, by documenting the ways in which identities are transformed by encounters with language, the law, culture, and public policy. She identifies three key areas as the project's case studies: activism, primarily HIV prevention; immigration law; and cyberspace. In each, Rodríguez theorizes the ways queer Latino/a/e identities are enabled or constrained, melding several theoretical and methodological approaches to argue that these sites are complex and dynamic social fields. As she moves the reader from one disciplinary location to the other, Rodríguez reveals the seams of her own academic engagement with queer latinidad. This deftly crafted work represents a dynamic and innovative approach to the study of identity formation and representation, making a vital contribution to a new reformulation of gender and sexuality studies.
Call Number: OnlinePublication Date: 2003
Crip theory: Cultural signs of Queerness and disability by
A bold and contemporary discourse of the intersection of disability studies and queer studies, Crip Theory attends to the contemporary cultures of disability and queerness that are coming out all over. Both disability studies and queer theory are centrally concerned with how bodies, pleasures, and identities are represented as "normal" or as abject, but Crip Theory is the first book to analyze thoroughly the ways in which these interdisciplinary fields inform each other. Drawing on feminist theory, African American and Latino/a/e cultural theories, composition studies, film and television studies, and theories of globalization and counter-globalization, Robert McRuer articulates the central concerns of crip theory and considers how such a critical perspective might impact cultural and historical inquiry in the humanities. Crip Theory puts forward readings of the Sharon Kowalski story, the performance art of Bob Flanagan, and the journals of Gary Fisher, as well as critiques of the domesticated queerness and disability marketed by the Millennium March, or Bravo TV's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. McRuer examines how dominant and marginal bodily and sexual identities are composed, and considers the vibrant ways that disability and queerness unsettle and re-write those identities in order to insist that another world is possible.
Call Number: OnlinePublication Date: 2006
Black Queer freedom: Spaces of injury and paths of desire by
Whether engaged in same-sex desire or gender nonconformity, black queer individuals live with being perceived as a threat while simultaneously being subjected to the threat of physical, psychological, and socioeconomical injury. Attending to and challenging threats has become a defining element in queer black artists' work throughout the black diaspora. GerShun Avilez analyzes the work of diasporic artists who, denied government protections, have used art to create spaces for justice. He first focuses on how the state seeks to inhibit the movement of black queer bodies through public spaces, whether on the street or across borders. From there, he pivots to institutional spaces--specifically prisons and hospitals--and the ways such places seek to expose queer bodies in order to control them. Throughout, he reveals how desire and art open routes to black queer freedom when policy, the law, racism, and homophobia threaten physical safety, civil rights, and social mobility.
Call Number: OnlinePublication Date: 2020
Geisha of a different kind: Race and sexuality in Gaysian America by
Repeatedly marginalized by both the white-centric queer community that values a hyper-masculine sexuality and the Asian American community that often privileges masculine heterosexuality, gay Asian American men largely have been silenced and alienated in present-day culture and society. In Geisha of a Different Kind, C. Winter Han travels from West Coast Asian drag shows to the internationally sought-after Thai kathoey, or "ladyboy," to construct a theory of queerness that is inclusive of the race and gender particularities of the gay Asian male experience in the United States. Through ethnographic observation of queer Asian American communities and Asian American drag shows, interviews with gay Asian American men, and a reading of current media and popular culture depictions of Asian Americans, Han argues that gay Asian American men, used to gender privilege within their own communities, must grapple with the idea that, as Asians, they have historically been feminized as a result of Western domination and colonization, and as a result, they are minorities within the gay community, which is itself marginalized within the overall American society. Han also shows that many Asian American gay men can turn their unusual position in the gay and Asian American communities into a positive identity. In their own conception of self, their Asian heritage and sexuality makes these men unique, special, and, in the case of Asian American drag queens, much more able to convey a convincing erotic femininity. Challenging stereotypes about beauty, nativity, and desirability, Geisha of a Different Kind makes a major intervention in the study of race and sexuality in America.
Call Number: OnlinePublication Date: 2015
In good relation: History, gender, and kinship in indigenous feminisms by Call Number: OnlinePublication Date: 2020
Print Books
Black on both sides: A racial history of Trans identity by
In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between Blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-Black and anti-trans legislation and violence. Drawing on a deep and varied archive of materials—early sexological texts, fugitive slave narratives, Afro-modernist literature, sensationalist journalism, Hollywood films—Snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable. In tracing the twinned genealogies of blackness and transness,
Call Number: Main Collection HQ77.95 .U6 S66 2017Publication Date: 2017
The history of sexuality by
Why we are so fascinated with sex and sexuality--from the preeminent philosopher of the 20th century. Michel Foucault offers an iconoclastic exploration of why we feel compelled to continually analyze and discuss sex, and of the social and mental mechanisms of power that cause us to direct the questions of what we are to what our sexuality is.
Call Number: Main Collection HQ12.F6813 1990Publication Date: 1990
Beyond Trans: Does gender matter? by Call Number: Main Collection HQ77.95.U6D39 2017Publication Date: 2017
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