University of Wisconsin Press, 2007 eISBN: 978-0-299-22203-1 | Paper: 978-0-299-22204-8 | Cloth: 978-0-299-22200-0 Library of Congress Classification CT25.C64 2007 Dewey Decimal Classification 920
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Exploring nearly sixty years of memoir and autobiography, Writing Desire examines the changing identity of gay men writing within a historical context. Distinguished scholar and psychoanalyst Bertram J. Cohler has carefully selected a diverse group of ten men, including historians, activists, journalists, poets, performance artists, and bloggers, whose life writing evokes the evolution of gay life in twentieth-century America.
By contrasting the personal experience of these disparate writers, Cohler illustrates the social transformations that these men helped shape. Among Cohler's diverse subjects is Alan Helms, whose journey from Indiana to New York's gay society represents the passage of men who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s, when homosexuality was considered a hidden "disease." The liberating effects of Stonewall's aftermath are chronicled in the life of Arnie Kantrowitz, the prototypical activist for gay rights in the 1970s and the founder the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation. The artistic works of Tim Miller and Mark Doty evoke loss and shock during of the early stages of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Cohler rounds out this collective group portrait by looking at the newest generation of writers in the Internet age via the blog of BrYaN, who did the previously unthinkable: he "outed" himself to millions of people.
A compelling mix of social history and personal biography, Writing Desire distills the experience of three generations of gay America.
Finalist, LGBT Studies, Lambda Literary Foundation
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Bertram J. Cohler is the William Rainey Harper Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. Cohler has published widely on gay life in America and is coauthor of The Course of Gay and Lesbian Lives: Social and Psychoanalytic Perspectives.
REVIEWS
"With his customary insight and command of scholarship, Cohler has written a remarkable account of how social and historical context shapes the meanings people make of their lives. His book illuminates the challenges of successive generations of gay men and also explores more broadly how people experience, understand, and write about their lives. Empathic and analytic, it is also a gripping read."—Ruthellen Josselson, author of The Space between Us: Exploring the Dimensions of Human Relationships
"A fascinating exploration of how time and place have shaped both the writing and the reading of six generations of gay men's life stories."—Henry L. Minton, author of Departing from Deviance: A History of Homosexual Rights and Emancipatory Science in America
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments 000
<LINE SPACE>
Part 1: Life-Writing about Desire for Sex with Other Men
Self, Experience, and Social Change 000
Writing a Life Story of Desire for Sex with Other Men 000
Social Change, Generation and Self life-Writing 000
Studying Desire, Generation, and the Life Story 000
Part 2: Born in the 1930s and Coming of Age in the Fifties
New York is a Wonderful Town 000
Urban Life as Refuge in the Postwar Era 000
Making the Gay Identity: Martin Duberman and the Beginning of a Movement 000
A Gay Icon in New York: Alan Helms' Unsettled Life 000
<<AU: need title for concluding section>> 000
Part 3: Born in the 1940's, Finding a Voice
Making an Identity at the Outset of the Gay Rights Movement 000
Coming Out in the Sixties and the Emergence of Gay Rights 000
Making the Social Movement: Arnie Kantrowitz and a Decade of Social Change 000
The Gay Education of Andrew Tobias 000
<<AU: need title for concluding section>> 000
Part 4: Born in the 1950s
Performing the Gay Revolution. Darkly 000
Dark Poet of the Revolution: Mark Doty 000
Performing the New Identity: Tim Miller 000
<<AU: Need title for this concluding section>> 000
Part 5: Born in the 1960s
Being Gay Within Family and Community 000
Writing Desire After the Revolution: Daniel Mendelsohn 000
Growing up with Gay Desire in the Shadow of the Religious Right: Marc Adams 000
<<AU: Need title for this concluding section>> 000
Part 6: Born in the 1970s and 1980s: Rewriting Gay Desire at the Millennium
Life-Writing at the Millennium 000
Coming Out and Being Out: Kirk Read 000(This "chapter title" is repetitive of the part title and first chapter title. See part file.)
Being Out on the "Net" 000<<AU: this is a subhead within the chapter "Being Out on the Net," so I have removed it from the toc>>
<<AU: Need title for this concluding section>> 000
Conclusion: Lives, Times, and Self Life-Writing about Same-Sex Desire
Social Context, Generation and Life-Writing about Same-Sex Desire 000
Looking Backward, Looking Forward in Writing the Life Story of Same-Sex Desire 000
<LINE SPACE>
Bibliography 000
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
University of Wisconsin Press, 2007 eISBN: 978-0-299-22203-1 Paper: 978-0-299-22204-8 Cloth: 978-0-299-22200-0
Exploring nearly sixty years of memoir and autobiography, Writing Desire examines the changing identity of gay men writing within a historical context. Distinguished scholar and psychoanalyst Bertram J. Cohler has carefully selected a diverse group of ten men, including historians, activists, journalists, poets, performance artists, and bloggers, whose life writing evokes the evolution of gay life in twentieth-century America.
By contrasting the personal experience of these disparate writers, Cohler illustrates the social transformations that these men helped shape. Among Cohler's diverse subjects is Alan Helms, whose journey from Indiana to New York's gay society represents the passage of men who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s, when homosexuality was considered a hidden "disease." The liberating effects of Stonewall's aftermath are chronicled in the life of Arnie Kantrowitz, the prototypical activist for gay rights in the 1970s and the founder the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation. The artistic works of Tim Miller and Mark Doty evoke loss and shock during of the early stages of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Cohler rounds out this collective group portrait by looking at the newest generation of writers in the Internet age via the blog of BrYaN, who did the previously unthinkable: he "outed" himself to millions of people.
A compelling mix of social history and personal biography, Writing Desire distills the experience of three generations of gay America.
Finalist, LGBT Studies, Lambda Literary Foundation
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Bertram J. Cohler is the William Rainey Harper Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. Cohler has published widely on gay life in America and is coauthor of The Course of Gay and Lesbian Lives: Social and Psychoanalytic Perspectives.
REVIEWS
"With his customary insight and command of scholarship, Cohler has written a remarkable account of how social and historical context shapes the meanings people make of their lives. His book illuminates the challenges of successive generations of gay men and also explores more broadly how people experience, understand, and write about their lives. Empathic and analytic, it is also a gripping read."—Ruthellen Josselson, author of The Space between Us: Exploring the Dimensions of Human Relationships
"A fascinating exploration of how time and place have shaped both the writing and the reading of six generations of gay men's life stories."—Henry L. Minton, author of Departing from Deviance: A History of Homosexual Rights and Emancipatory Science in America
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments 000
<LINE SPACE>
Part 1: Life-Writing about Desire for Sex with Other Men
Self, Experience, and Social Change 000
Writing a Life Story of Desire for Sex with Other Men 000
Social Change, Generation and Self life-Writing 000
Studying Desire, Generation, and the Life Story 000
Part 2: Born in the 1930s and Coming of Age in the Fifties
New York is a Wonderful Town 000
Urban Life as Refuge in the Postwar Era 000
Making the Gay Identity: Martin Duberman and the Beginning of a Movement 000
A Gay Icon in New York: Alan Helms' Unsettled Life 000
<<AU: need title for concluding section>> 000
Part 3: Born in the 1940's, Finding a Voice
Making an Identity at the Outset of the Gay Rights Movement 000
Coming Out in the Sixties and the Emergence of Gay Rights 000
Making the Social Movement: Arnie Kantrowitz and a Decade of Social Change 000
The Gay Education of Andrew Tobias 000
<<AU: need title for concluding section>> 000
Part 4: Born in the 1950s
Performing the Gay Revolution. Darkly 000
Dark Poet of the Revolution: Mark Doty 000
Performing the New Identity: Tim Miller 000
<<AU: Need title for this concluding section>> 000
Part 5: Born in the 1960s
Being Gay Within Family and Community 000
Writing Desire After the Revolution: Daniel Mendelsohn 000
Growing up with Gay Desire in the Shadow of the Religious Right: Marc Adams 000
<<AU: Need title for this concluding section>> 000
Part 6: Born in the 1970s and 1980s: Rewriting Gay Desire at the Millennium
Life-Writing at the Millennium 000
Coming Out and Being Out: Kirk Read 000(This "chapter title" is repetitive of the part title and first chapter title. See part file.)
Being Out on the "Net" 000<<AU: this is a subhead within the chapter "Being Out on the Net," so I have removed it from the toc>>
<<AU: Need title for this concluding section>> 000
Conclusion: Lives, Times, and Self Life-Writing about Same-Sex Desire
Social Context, Generation and Life-Writing about Same-Sex Desire 000
Looking Backward, Looking Forward in Writing the Life Story of Same-Sex Desire 000
<LINE SPACE>
Bibliography 000
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE