Working at the intersection of psychoanalytic, queer, and transgender theories, this book argues for the need to read Lacanian psychoanalysis through a queer and trans-positive framework. In so doing, it challenges the dimensions of fantasy at play in efforts to insist on the continued validity of the binary gender system. Targeting the Lacanian concept of “sexual difference” - that desire is structured through the difference between masculine and feminine - it argues that this idea is not transhistorical, as orthodox Lacanians claim, but rather a historically contingent fantasy. As such, it argues that psychoanalytic queer theorists need to go beyond this fantasy to register truly the full range of sexualities and modes of embodiment. Examining texts as diverse as films such as Hedwig and the Angry Inch and literary texts such as Paul takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, the book enables a queer and trans- inclusive model of theorizing subjectivity in psychoanalysis, psychosocial studies and cultural studies.

At the end of the twentieth century, the questions raised and issues explored in Woolf studies prove to be sufficient themes of inquiry for a new century. Can there exist common ground between queer theorists and lesbian-feminists, or are their causes not connected and must they go their separate ways? Virginia Woolf belongs simultaneously to her time and to ours: What allusions would her contemporaries have taken for granted that must now be recovered through meticulous scholarship? What codes whose meanings are apparent to readers now would have been available to very few in her own time? What was popular film culture like and what connections might we find between Woolf's art and British film of the 1920s? How can Woolf help us think through the dangers of nationalism? What does Three Guineas contribute to a discussion of corporate globalism? And how does it illuminate what has happened for women in the academy and in the professions in the sixty years since it was published? Contributors to Virginia Woolf: Turning The Centuries who pose and suggest answers to these and many other questions include Julia Briggs, Suzette Henke, Sally Greene, Alison Booth, Pamela Caughie, Judith Roof, Diane Gillespie, Melba Cuddy-Keane, and Jane Lilienfeld.

This book brings together the theory and practice of anti-oppressive approaches to social science research. It is a work that will have a place in the classroom, as well as on the desks of researchers in agencies, governments, and private consulting practice. The first section of the book is devoted to the ontological and epistemological considerations involved in such research, including theorizing the self of the researcher. The second section of the book offers exemplars across a range of methodologies, including institutional ethnography, narrative autobiography, storytelling and Indigenous research, and participatory action research. This is a unique text in that it describes both theoretical foundations and practical applications, and because all of the featured researchers occupy marginalized locations. It is also firmly anchored in the Canadian context.

These articles examine how media presents prisons and punishment, and how this presentation is related to public attitudes and government penal policy.

This Guide analyzes the criticism of English-language literature from the major regions and countries of the postcolonial world. Criticism on works by key writers, such as Jean Rhys, V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie and Jamaica Kincaid, is discussed throughout the volume to illustrate the themes and concepts that are essential to an understanding of postcolonial literature and the development of criticism in the field. Criticism and theoretical approaches are discussed in relation to analyses of literary works from South Africa, Nigeria, Jamaica, Antigua, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and Sri Lanka. Criticism on Native American writing, African American literature, as well as Irish, Scottish and Welsh liberationist texts are also mentioned throughout. The book concludes with a discussion of the theoretical debates surrounding neocolonialism, globalization and what has been referred to as and the rise of a "new world" economic empire in the West that has accelerated since the dismantling of the Soviet Union.

Transcript of papers presented at a seminar organized by the Dept. of English, Punjabi U., Patiala on February 24-25, 2005.