Library Research Guides: Philosophy: Introduction to Queer Theory

Introduction

In celebration of Pride Month, we've created this feature on queer theory.

Queer theory is a way of thinking that dismantles traditional assumptions about gender and sexual identities. The field emerged from sexuality studies and women's studies. Queer theorists analyze gender and sexuality as socially and culturally constructed concepts. The goal of queer theory is to challenge traditional academic approaches and fight against social inequality.

Is "queer" an offensive term?

Historically, the word queer was - and still can be - used as a pejorative term against members of the LGBT community. However, beginning in the 1960s in the wake of the LGBT rights movement, people in the community sought to reclaim the word queer as an umbrella term for all non-heterosexual, non-cisgender identities. That's what the Q stands for in the acronym LGBTQ! Despite today's wide acceptance of the word queer, it is still important to recognize that not all members of the LGBTQ community identify as queer, and may still find the term offensive.

For more information about the history of the word "queer," check out this YouTube video.

General Resources

Queer Theory by Annamarie Jagose
ISBN: 0814742335
Publication Date: 1997-02-01
The reclamation of the term queer over the last several decades marked a shift in the study of sexuality from a focus on supposedly essential categories such as gay and lesbian, to more fluid notions of sexual identity. On the cutting-edge of this significant shift was Annamarie Jagose's classic text Queer Theory: An Introduction. In this groundbreaking work, Jagose provides a clear and concise explanation of queer theory, tracing it as part of an intriguing history of same-sex love over the last century.

Archives of Sexuality and Gender
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Provides access to materials exploring important aspects of LGBTQ life. Includes periodicals, newsletters, manuscripts, government records, organizational papers, correspondence, an international selection of posters, and other primary source materials.

Includes access to four modules: LGBTQ History Since 1940, part 1, LGBTQ History Since 1940, part 2, International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture, and L'Enfer de la Bibliotheque Nationale de France Digital Archive.
Sex & Sexuality
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Explores changing attitudes towards human sexuality, gender identities and sexual behaviors throughout the twentieth century. Produced in collaboration with the Kinsey Institute Library and Special Collections, the resource includes the work of leading American sexologists, sex researchers, and organizations.

Users will be prompted to confirm that they are over the age of consent to access this resource. Please be aware that this resource contains material of a sexually explicit nature. Content includes, but is not limited to, descriptions and imagery of sexual violence; non-consensual sexual activity; sexual activity including minors; surgery and suicide.

Includes research papers and records spanning the tenures of the first three Institute directors; Dr Alfred C. Kinsey (1947-1956), Dr Paul H. Gebhard (1956-1982) and Dr June Reinisch (1982-1993).
Gender Studies Database
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Citations to articles, books, conference papers, pamphlets, dissertations and other publications about women and feminism, women's studies and men's studies.
Gender: Identity and Social Change
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Primary sources documenting the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations from the nineteenth century to the present. Includes sources for the study of women's suffrage, the feminist movement, the men’s movement, employment, education, the body, the family, and government and politics.

Material has been sourced from across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. Key areas represented in the material include: employment and labor, education, government and legislation, the body, domesticity and the family. Includes records from men’s and women’s organisations and pressure groups, detailing twentieth-century lobbying and activism on a wide array of issues to reveal developing gender relations and prevalent challenges.

Queer Theory LibGuide from University of Illinois Library
Library of Congress Subject Headings for LGBTQI Topics

Queer Theorists

Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
ISBN: 0415924995
Publication Date: 1999-09-02
Since its publication in 1990, Gender Trouble has become one of the key works of contemporary feminist theory, and an essential work for anyone interested in the study of gender, queer theory, or the politics of sexuality in culture.
Undoing Gender by Judith Butler
ISBN: 0415969220
Publication Date: 2004-08-23
Undoing Gender constitutes Judith Butler's recent reflections on gender and sexuality, focusing on new kinship, psychoanalysis and the incest taboo, transgender, intersex, diagnostic categories, social violence, and the tasks of social transformation. Drawing from feminist and queer theory, Butler considers the norms that govern gender and sexuality as they relate to the constraints on recognizable personhood. The book is a reconsideration of her earlier view on gender performativity from Gender Trouble.

The History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault
ISBN: 0394740262
Publication Date: 1980-01-12
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.

How to Do the History of Homosexuality by David M. Halperin
ISBN: 0226314472
Publication Date: 2002-11-15
David M. Halperin argues that hetero- and homosexuality are not biologically constituted but are, instead, historically and culturally produced. Halperin offers a vigorous defense of the historicist approach to the construction of sexuality, an approach that sets a premium on the description of other societies in all their irreducible specificity and does not force them to fit our own conceptions of what sexuality is or ought to be.

Epistemology of the Closet by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
ISBN: 9780520254060
Publication Date: 2008-01-17
Working from classic texts of European and American writers including Melville, James, Nietzsche, Proust, and Wilde, Sedgwick analyzes a turn-of-the-century historical moment in which sexual orientation became as important a demarcation of personhood as gender had been for centuries. In her preface to this updated edition Sedgwick places the book both personally and historically, looking specifically at the horror of the first wave of the AIDS epidemic and its influence on the text.

Deviations by Gayle S. Rubin
ISBN: 9780822349716
Publication Date: 2011-11-28
Deviations is the definitive collection of writings by Gayle S. Rubin, a pioneering theorist and activist in feminist, lesbian and gay, queer, and sexuality studies. Along with her canonical essays "The Traffic in Women" and "Thinking Sex", Deviations features less well-known but equally insightful writing on subjects such as lesbian history, the feminist sex wars, the politics of sadomasochism, crusades against prostitution and pornography, and the historical development of sexual knowledge.

Fear of a Queer Planet by Michael Warner
ISBN: 0816623341
Publication Date: 1993-10-21
In recent years, lesbians and gay men have developed a new, aggressive style of politics. At the same time, innovative intellectual energies have made queer theory an explosive field of study. In "Fear of a Queer Planet", Michael Warner draws on emerging new queer politics, and shows how queer activists have come to challenge basic assumptions about the social and political world.

The Practice of Love by Teresa de de Lauretis
ISBN: 0253316812
Publication Date: 1994-05-22
Presenting a complex argument about an issue vital to the psychoanalytic endeavor as well as to feminist theory, The Practice of Love should stimulate a reconsideration of 'perversion' and the construction of sexual fantasy. The illumination of the fantasies that make lesbian desire distinctive will necessarily open up our understanding of all sexuality.

Philosophy

Introduction

Is "queer" an offensive term?

General Resources

Queer Theorists

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