Lesbian Studies: Setting an Agenda

by Tamsin Wilton

Neither women's studies nor lesbian and gay studies have yet been able to offer an adequate theoretical or political framework for lesbians and lesbianism. Yet such a matrix is urgently needed, because the political and social position of lesbians is increasingly complex, especially in the light of the rise of the New Right and the new queer activism. Lesbian Studies: Setting an Agenda establishes such a matrix and provides an academic approach to both gender and the erotic, clarifying the damaging influence of heterosexism and examining lesbian treatment in sociology, feminism, psychology, social policy, cultural studies, film theory and history. In addition to setting an agenda for lesbian studies, this book provides a wide resource and catalyst for anyone interested in gender and the erotic, including students and professionals in gender studies, sociology and cultural studies.

Genres: Lesbian, LGBT, Nonfiction

248 pages, Paperback

First published July 9, 1995

Reviews

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I re-read this for an article I'm working on, so I already had a sense of her main arguments and such. I think it's a good read for the ways in which it lays out some of the challenges with trying to establish the field of lesbian studies in the 1990s, and it was interesting reading it some 25 years after the fact (given that the field really doesn't exist). Huge portions of the book feel very dated, (for example, queer theory is no longer "new"), but other parts still feel woefully relevant. Give it a go if you want to know more about what issues lesbians were grappling with when trying to figure out whether or not lesbian studies should be its own discipline, and if it belonged in academia.

[vrtgo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book. Very nuanced and well written, and really helped me to understand not only my own feminist perspective, but the other feminist/adjacent camps.