Shinjuku Ni-chome is a nightlife district in central Tokyo filled with bars and clubs targeting the city's gay male community. Typically understood as a "safe space" where same-sex attracted men and women from across Japan's largest city can gather to find support from a relentlessly heteronormative society, Thomas Baudinette's Regimes of Desire: Young Gay Men, Media, and Masculinity in Tokyo (U Michigan Press, 2021) reveals that the neighborhood may not be as welcoming as previously depicted in prior literature. Through fieldwork observation and interviews with young men who regularly frequent the neighborhood's many bars, the book reveals that the district is instead a space where only certain performances of gay identity are considered desirable. In fact, the district is highly stratified, with Shinjuku Ni-chome's bar culture privileging "hard" masculine identities as the only legitimate expression of gay desire and thus excluding all those men who supposedly "fail" to live up to these hegemonic gendered ideals. Through careful analysis of media such as pornographic videos, manga comics, lifestyle magazines and online dating services, this book argues that the commercial imperatives of the Japanese gay media landscape and the bar culture of Shinjuku Ni-chome act together to limit the agency of young gay men so as to better exploit them economically. Exploring the direct impacts of media consumption on the lives of four key informants who frequent the district's gay bars in search of community, fun and romance, Regimes of Desire reveals the complexity of Tokyo's most popular "gay town" and intervenes in debates over the changing nature of masculinity in contemporary Japan.Alexandra Hambleton is an assistant professor at Tsuda University in Tokyo, Japan. I write on media, gender, and sexuality in contemporary Japan with a particular interest in pornography and sex-positive feminism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Beyond simplistic binaries of the dark continent or Africa Rising, Africans at home and abroad articulate their identities through their quotidian practices and cultural politics. Amongst the privileged classes, these articulations can be characterized as Afropolitan projects--cultural, political, and aesthetic expressions of global belonging rooted in African ideals. Afropolitan Projects: Redefining Blackness, Sexualities, and Culture from Houston to Accra (UNC Press, 2021) examines the Afropolitan projects of Ghanaians living in two cosmopolitan cities: Houston, Texas, and Accra, Ghana. Anima Adjepong's focus shifts between the cities, exploring contests around national and pan-African cultural politics, race, class, sexuality, and religion. Focusing particularly on queer sexuality, Adjepong offers unique insight into the contemporary sexual politics of the Afropolitan class. The book expands and complicates existing research by providing an in-depth transnational case study that not only addresses questions of cosmopolitanism, class, and racial identity but also considers how gender and sexuality inform the racialized identities of Africans in the United States and in Ghana. Bringing an understudied cohort of class-privileged Africans to the forefront, Adjepong offers a more fully realized understanding of the diversity of African lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Suicide has been on the rise in recent years, most frighteningly among young people. Suicide is second leading cause of death for people ages 10-14 and 25-34. Gay, lesbian, and transgender youth are at particular risk.Every year in the U.S., more people die by suicide than in car accidents, and more suicide deaths occur than homicide and AIDS deaths combined.In this episode Renee Garfinkel and Hannah Rothstein discuss the myths and facts about suicide, its warning signs, and how friends and family, teachers and others can help.Hannah Rothstein, Ph.D. is Professor Emerita of Management at Baruch College, City University of New York, Crisis Counselor for the Trevor Project.If you’re thinking about suicide or you’re in crisis right now,In U.S. call or text 988 or contact 988lifeline.org to talk with someone online.In Israel: call suicide hotline *1201 (press 3 for languages, then select English).Hannah Rothstein, Ph.D. is Professor Emerita of Management at Baruch College, City University of New York, Crisis Counselor for the Trevor Project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

In Queer and Trans Madness: Struggles for Social Justice (Palgrave Macmillan), Merrick D. Pilling urges those invested in social justice for 2SLGBTQ people to interrogate the biomedical model of mental illness beyond the diagnoses that specifically target gender and sexual dissidence. In this first comprehensive application of Mad Studies to queer and trans experiences of mental distress, Pilling advances a broad critique of the biomedical model of mental illness as it pertains to 2SLGBTQ people, arguing that Mad Studies is especially amenable to making sense of queer and trans madness. Based on empirical data from two qualitative research studies, this book includes analyses of inpatient chart documentation from a psychiatric hospital and interviews with those who have experienced distress. Using an intersectional lens, Pilling critically examines what constitutes mental health treatment and the impacts of medical strategies on mad queer and trans people. Ultimately, Queer and Trans Madness: Struggles for Social Justice explores the emancipatory promise of queer and trans madness, advocating for more resources to respond to crisis and distress in ways that are non-coercive, non-carceral, and honour autonomy as well as interdependence within 2SLGBTQ communities.Clayton Jarrard works at the University of Kansas Center for Research, contributing to initiatives that bridge research, policy, and community efforts. His scholarly engagement spans the subject areas of cultural anthropology, queer studies, disability studies, mad studies, and religious studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

In Queer in Translation: Sexual Politics under Neoliberal Islam (Duke UP, 2021), Evren Savcı analyzes the travel and translation of Western LGBT political terminology to Turkey in order to illuminate how sexual politics have unfolded under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's AKP government. Under the AKP's neoliberal Islamic regime, Savcı shows, there has been a stark shift from a politics of multicultural inclusion to one of securitized authoritarianism. Drawing from ethnographic work with queer activist groups to understand how discourses of sexuality travel and are taken up in political discourse, Savcı traces the intersection of queerness, Islam, and neoliberal governance within new and complex regimes of morality. Savcı turns to translation as a queer methodology to think Islam and neoliberalism together and to evade the limiting binaries of traditional/modern, authentic/colonial, global/local, and East/West—thereby opening up ways of understanding the social movements and political discourse that coalesce around sexual liberation in ways that do justice to the complexities both of what circulates under the signifier Islam and of sexual political movements in Muslim-majority countries.This interview is part of an NBN special series on “Mobilities and Methods.”Evren Savcı is Assistant Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University.Alize Arıcan is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research focuses on urban renewal, futurity, care, and migration in Istanbul, Turkey. Her work has been featured in Current Anthropology, City & Society, Radical Housing Journal, and entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Why isn’t there a queer subfield in philosophy? How has institutionalized philosophy continued to develop without a recognized specialization in queer philosophy? What would it mean to care queerly for philosophy? And how might that change not only the field, but the possibilities for living? These are just some of the questions raised by Kim Q. Hall in Queering Philosophy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). Hall diagnoses philosophy’s straight habits and shows how an intersectional approach to queering philosophy can allow us to practice philosophy otherwise. By building a promiscuous archive to think along with many questioners of dominate norms, Hall argues for a pursuit of wisdom that is relational, experimental, and attuned to other ways of life.Sarah Tyson is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Denver. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Why do some scholars sacrifice truth and logic to political ideology and peer acceptance?With courage and intellectual integrity, queer scholar-activist Corinne Blackmer stages a pointed critique of scholars whose anti-Israel bias pervades their activism as well as their academic work. In contrast to the posturing that characterizes her colleagues’ work, this work demonstrates true scholarship and makes an important contribution to the field of Israel studies.In Queering Anti-Zionism: Academic Freedom, LGBTQ Intellectuals, and Israel/Palestine Campus Activism (Wayne State UP, 2022), Blackmer demonstrates how the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement that seeks to delegitimize and isolate Israel has become a central part of social justice advocacy on campus, particularly within gender and sexuality studies programs. The chapters focus on the intellectual work of Sarah Schulman, Jasbir Puar, Angela Davis, Dean Spade, and Judith Butler, demonstrating how they misapply critical theory in their discussions of the State of Israel.Blackmer shows how these LGBTQ intellectuals mobilize queer theory and intersectionality to support the BDS movement at the expense of academic freedom, open discourse, and intellectual integrity.Send comments and suggestions to: reneeg@vanleer.org.il Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

"The dominatrix is the id of American femininity. She says the words that we all wish we could say when we find ourselves frozen in the presence of men. No is principal among them."So writes Chris Belcher, who appeared destined for a life of conventional femininity after she took first place in an infant beauty contest--a minor glory that can follow you around a working-class town of 1,600 people in rural West Virginia. But when she came out as queer, the conservative community that had once celebrated its prettiest baby turned on her.A decade later, living in Los Angeles and trying to stay afloat in the early years of a PhD program, Belcher plunges into the work of a pro domme. Branding herself as LA's Renowned Lesbian Dominatrix, she specializes in male clients who want a domme to make them feel worthless, shameful, and weak--all the abuse regularly heaped upon women for free. A queer woman whom men can trust with the unorthodox sides of their sexualities, Belcher is paid to be the keeper of the fantasies that they can't enact in their everyday relationships. But moonlighting as a sex worker also carries risks, like the not-so-submissive who tries to turn the tables and the jealous client out for revenge.As Belcher moves between the embodied world of the pro domme and the abstract realm of academia, she discovers how lessons from the classroom apply to the dungeon, and vice versa. Still, fear that her doctoral program won't approve burdens her with a double life. Pretty Baby: A Memoir (Simon and Schuster, 2022) is her second coming out.In this sharp and discerning memoir, we see through Belcher's eyes how power and desire can be renegotiated--or reinforced.Morris Ardoin is author of STONE MOTEL: MEMOIRS OF A CAJUN BOY (University Press of Mississippi, 2020). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Edited by Ellie D. Hernandez, Eddy Francisco Alvarez Jr., and Magda García, Transmovimientos: Latinx Queer Migrations, Bodies, and Space (University of Nebraska Press, 2021) focuses on queer, trans, and gender nonconforming communities of immigrants and social dissidents who reflect on and write about diaspora and migratory movements while navigating geographical and embodied spaces across gendered and racialized contexts. It forms a nuanced conversation between scholarship and social activism that speaks in concrete ways about diasporic and migratory LGBTQ communities who suffer from immoral immigration policies and political discourses that produce untenable living situations. It received the silver medal in the Best LGBTQ Themed book category at the 2022 International Latino Book Prize.Dr. Ellie D. Hernandez is an Associate Professor in the department of Chicana/o Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara where she teaches and writes extensively on Chicanx literature and culture, citizenship, transnational Chicana/o and Latina/o cultural production, and Latinx LGBTQ Studies. She is also the author of Postnationalism in Chicana/o Literature and Culture and co-editor of The UnMaking of Latina/o Citizenship: Culture, Politics, and Aesthetics.Isabel Machado is a cultural historian whose work often crosses national and disciplinary boundaries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

The contributors to Queer Kinship: Race, Sex, Belonging, Form (Duke UP, 2022) assert the importance of queer kinship to queer and trans theory and to kinship theory. In a contemporary moment marked by the rising tides of neoliberalism, fascism, xenophobia, and homo- and cis-nationalism, they approach kinship as both a horizon and a source of violence and possibility. The contributors challenge dominant theories of kinship that ignore the devastating impacts of chattel slavery, settler colonialism, and racialized nationalism on the bonds of Black and Indigenous people and people of color. Among other topics, they examine the “blood tie” as the legal marker of kin relations, the everyday experiences and memories of trans mothers and daughters in Istanbul, the outsourcing of reproductive labor in postcolonial India, kinship as a model of governance beyond the liberal state, and the intergenerational effects of the adoption of Indigenous children as a technology of settler colonialism. Queer Kinship pushes the methodological and theoretical underpinnings of queer theory forward while opening up new paths for studying kinship.Tyler Bradway is Associate Professor of English at the State University of New York, Cortland, and author of Queer Experimental Literature: The Affective Politics of Bad Reading.Elizabeth Freeman is Professor of English at the University of California, Davis, and author of Beside You in Time: Sense Methods and Queer Sociabilities in the American Nineteenth Century, and other books also published by Duke University Press.Sohini Chatterjee is a PhD Candidate in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at Western University, Canada. Her work has recently appeared in Women's Studies: An inter-disciplinary journal, South Asian Popular Culture and Fat Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies