»To define is to limit«, Lord Henry states, and Mrs. Dalloway »would not say of anyone [...] that they were this or that«. Why then are the respective novels mostly read - and in recent adaptations rewritten - in denial of their genuinely ambiguous designs? Bringing the two literary classics together for the first time, their shared concerns regarding textual and sexual identities are revealed. Challenging an established critical record commonly related to Oscar Wilde's and Virginia Woolf's own mythologised biographies, this study underscores the value of constantly rethinking labels by liberating the texts from the limiting grip of categorical readings.

Couldn't get enough of Love, Simon or The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue? This is the (slightly NSFW) book for you! --------------- 'My first time getting it in the butt was kind of weird. I think it's going to be weird for everyone's first time, though.' Meet Jack Rothman. He's seventeen and loves partying, makeup and boys - sometimes all at the same time. His sex life makes him the hot topic for the high school gossip machine. But who cares? Like Jack always says, 'it could be worse'. He doesn't actually expect that to come true. But after Jack starts writing an online sex advice column, the mysterious love letters he's been getting take a turn for the creepy. Jack's secret admirer knows everything: where he's hanging out, who he's sleeping with, who his mum is dating. They claim they love Jack, but not his unashamedly queer lifestyle. They need him to curb his sexuality, or they'll force him. As the pressure mounts, Jack must unmask his stalker before their obsession becomes genuinely dangerous...

The Palgrave Handbook of the Psychology of Sexuality and Gender combines cutting edge research to provide a thorough overview of all the normative - and many of the less common - sexualities, genders and relationship forms alongside psychological and intersectional areas relating to sexuality and gender.

Part I of this authoritative handbook offers systematic essays, which deal with major historical, social, philosophical, political, cultural and aesthetic contexts of the English novel between 1830 and 1900. The essays offer a wide scope of aspects such as the Industrial Revolution, religion and secularisation, science, technology, medicine, evolution or the increasing mediatisation of the lifeworld. Part II, then, leads through the work of more than 25 eminent Victorian novelists. Each of these chapters provides both historical and biographical contextualisation, overview, close reading and analysis. They also encourage further research as they look upon the work of the respective authors at issue from the perspectives of cultural and literary theory.

Transnational Cinematic & Popular Music Icons: Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, & Queen Latifah, 1917-2017 centers twentieth and twenty-first century black-transnational stereotypes, celebrities, and symbols Lena Horne's, Dorothy Dandridge;s, and Queen Latifah’s transnational popular cultural struggles between domination and autonomy, with a particular emphasis on their films and popular music. Linking each performer to twentieth century U.S., African-American, and global gender histories and noting the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, class, and empire in their overlapping transnational biographies, Transnational Cinematic & Popular Music Icons: Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, & Queen Latifah, 1917-2017 connects Horne, Dandridge, and Latifah to each other and legacies of Hollywood stereotypes and popular music’s internationally-routed politics. Through a close reading of Horne's, Dandridge's, and Latifah’s films and popular music, the performers tie to historic black-transnational caricatures, from the “tragic mulatto” to Sapphire, Mammy, and Jezebel, and additional, non-white female performers, from Josephine Baker to Halle Berry, maneuvering within transnational popular culture industrial matrices and against white supremacist and hetero-patriarchal forces.

The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical is dedicated to the musical’s evolving relationship to American culture in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In the past decade-and-a-half, international scholars from an ever-widening number of disciplines and specializations have been actively contributing to the interdisciplinary field of musical theater studies. Musicals have served not only to mirror the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural tenor of the times, but have helped shape and influence it, in America and across the globe: a genre that may seem, at first glance, light-hearted and escapist serves also as a bold commentary on society. Forty-four essays examine the contemporary musical as an ever-shifting product of an ever-changing culture. This volume sheds new light on the American musical as a thriving, contemporary performing arts genre, one that could have died out in the post-Tin Pan Alley era but instead has managed to remain culturally viable and influential, in part by newly embracing a series of complex contradictions. At present, the American musical is a live, localized, old-fashioned genre that has simultaneously developed into an increasingly globalized, tech-savvy, intensely mediated mass entertainment form. Similarly, as it has become increasingly international in its scope and appeal, the stage musical has also become more firmly rooted to Broadway—the idea, if not the place—and thus branded as a quintessentially American entertainment.

"Gilda, a twenty-something, atheist, animal-loving lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death. Desperate for relief from her panicky mind and alienated from her repressive family, she responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local Catholic church, and finds herself being greeted by Father Jeff, who assumes she's there for a job interview. Too embarrassed to correct him, Gilda is abruptly hired to replace the recently deceased receptionist Grace. In between trying to memorize the lines to Catholic mass, hiding the fact that she has a new girlfriend, and erecting a dirty dish tower in her crumbling apartment, Gilda strikes up an email correspondence with Grace's old friend. She can't bear to ignore the kindly old woman, who has been trying to reach her friend through the church inbox, but she also can't bring herself to break the bad news. Desperate, she begins impersonating Grace via email. But when the police discover suspicious circumstances surrounding Grace's death, Gilda may have to finally reveal the truth of her mortifying existence."--Amazon.