Sexuality

Critical Bottoming: Repositioning Male Effeminacy and its Racialization

By John Paul Stadler

Nguyen Tan Hoang. A View from the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Sexual Representation. Duke University Press, 2014. 287 pp.

The figure of the gay, Asian bottom is often misunderstood. His racial, gender, and sexual identities are typically conflated and maligned for being too submissive and effeminate. This, at least, is the opening contention of Nguyen Tan Hoang’s A View from the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Sexual Representation.
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Straight Sense

By Andy Campbell

Jean-Luc Nancy. Corpus II. Trans. Anne O’Byrne. New York: Fordham University Press, 2013.

I often ask undergraduates encountering philosophical texts for the first time to initially read as though they were encountering poetry instead of philosophy. Not only does this tactic soften the array of feelings (overwhelmed indignation is perennially popular) that inevitably seem to arise when reading dense texts, but it also opens a student’s capabilities to understand and imagine alongside a text.
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Orgasm Without Bodies

By Ela Przybylo

Annamarie Jagose. Orgasmology. Duke University Press, 2013. 251 pp.

Annamarie Jagose’s Orgasmology is a glistening tome of a book. Speaking to the critical figure of the orgasm, Orgasmology – wittily masquerading as an encyclopedic-type entity – has something to offer to every sexuality and queer studies scholar, student, and practitioner.
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