"A poignant account by a survivor of a church-supported sexual orientation conversion therapy facility that claimed to "cure" homosexuality describes its intense Bible study program and the daily threats of his abandonment by family, friends and God, an experience that transformed the author's relationships and self-understandings, "--NoveList.

Drawn from the eponymous blog essays on faith, culture, and lives of Christian discipleship by young Jesuit priests and seminarians for young adult seekers.

The New York Times bestselling memoir about identity, love and understanding. Now a major motion picture starring Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, and Lucas Hedges, directed by Joel Edgerton. “Every sentence of the story will stir your soul” (O Magazine). The son of a Baptist pastor and deeply embedded in church life in small town Arkansas, as a young man Garrard Conley was terrified and conflicted about his sexuality. When Garrard was a nineteen-year-old college student, he was outed to his parents, and was forced to make a life-changing decision: either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy program that promised to "cure" him of homosexuality; or risk losing family, friends, and the God he had prayed to every day of his life. Through an institutionalized Twelve-Step Program heavy on Bible study, he was supposed to emerge heterosexual, ex-gay, cleansed of impure urges and stronger in his faith in God for his brush with sin. Instead, even when faced with a harrowing and brutal journey, Garrard found the strength and understanding to break out in search of his true self and forgiveness. By confronting his buried past and the burden of a life lived in shadow, Garrard traces the complex relationships among family, faith, and community. At times heart-breaking, at times triumphant, Boy Erased is a testament to love that survives despite all odds.

The New York Times bestselling memoir about identity, love and understanding. Now a major motion picture starring Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, and Lucas Hedges, directed by Joel Edgerton. “Every sentence of the story will stir your soul” (O Magazine). The son of a Baptist pastor and deeply embedded in church life in small town Arkansas, as a young man Garrard Conley was terrified and conflicted about his sexuality. When Garrard was a nineteen-year-old college student, he was outed to his parents, and was forced to make a life-changing decision: either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy program that promised to "cure" him of homosexuality; or risk losing family, friends, and the God he had prayed to every day of his life. Through an institutionalized Twelve-Step Program heavy on Bible study, he was supposed to emerge heterosexual, ex-gay, cleansed of impure urges and stronger in his faith in God for his brush with sin. Instead, even when faced with a harrowing and brutal journey, Garrard found the strength and understanding to break out in search of his true self and forgiveness. By confronting his buried past and the burden of a life lived in shadow, Garrard traces the complex relationships among family, faith, and community. At times heart-breaking, at times triumphant, Boy Erased is a testament to love that survives despite all odds.

This book is one of the first to apply the theoretical tools proposed by French philosopher Bruno Latour to film studies. Through the example of the Hollywood Teen Film and with a particular focus on Actor-Network Theory (ANT), the book delineates how Teen Film has established itself as one of Hollywood’s most consistent and dynamic genres. While many productions may recycle formulaic patterns, there is also a proliferation of cinematic coming-of-age narratives that are aesthetically and politically progressive, experimental, and complex. The case studies develop a Latourian film semiotics as a flexible analytical approach which raises new questions, not only about the history, types and tropes of teen films, but also about their aesthetics, mediality, and composition. Through an exploration of a wide and diverse range of examples from the past decade, including films by female and African-American directors, urban and rural perspectives, and non-heteronormative sexualities, Actor-Network Theory at the Movies demonstrates how the classic Teen Film canon has been regurgitated, expanded, and renewed.

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject American Studies, grade: 1,7, University of Paderborn (Fakultät für Kulturwissenschaften), course: American Trauma Narratives, language: English, abstract: Boy Erased can be read as a trauma narrative with a special focus on the trauma narrative's function of creating reader empathy described by Laurie Vickroy. Therefore, this paper argues that Boy Erased offers the narrative strategies of the first-person point of view, interior monologues, foregrounding, and providing insight views into another character's thoughts and feelings to fulfill the trauma narrative function of creating reader empathy. To prove this thesis, the paper's content is structured like the following. Firstly, the text gives a theoretical background on ex-gay conversion therapy, its harmful effects as well as its current relevance to the United States. Moreover, the paper defines reader empathy in trauma literature as described by Vickroy .Here, the chapter lays out the most important concepts for the analysis of reader empathy in the primary text. After that, the relevance of reader empathy specifically in Boy Erased will be pointed out. The next chapter covers an elaborate analysis of how Conley engages reader empathy throughout the memoir. Finally, the paper's central findings will be summarized in a conclusion with an outlook on further research.