This interdisciplinary volume of thirty original essays engages with four key concerns of queer theoretical work – identity, discourse, normativity and relationality.

A combination of distinguished and emerging scholars from a wide range of international locations, put the terms ‘queer’ and ‘theory’ under interrogation in and effort to map the relations and disjunctions between them. These contributors are especially attendant to the many theoretical discourses intersecting with queer theory – feminist theory, LGBT studies, postcolonial theory, psychoanalysis, disability studies, Marxism, poststructuralism, critical race studies and posthumanism to name a few.

This Companion provides an up to the minute snapshot of queer scholarship from the past two decades, identifies many current directions queer theorizing is taking, while also signposts several fruitful avenues for future research. This book is both an invaluable and authoritative resource for scholars and an indispensable teaching tool for use in the classroom.

Contents: Introduction: the 'q' word, Noreen Giffney; Part I Identity: On being post-normal: heterosexuality after queer theory, Calvin Thomas; Why 5 sexes are not enough, Iain Morland; 'The scholars formerly known as …': bisexuality, queerness and identity politics, Jonathan Alexander and Karen Yescavage; The curious persistence of lesbian studies, Linda Garber; Making it like a drag king: female-to-male masculinity and the trans culture of boyhood, Bobby Noble; Phenomenology, embodiment and the political efficacy of contingent identity claims, Annabelle Willox; Queer posthumanism: cyborgs, animals, monsters, perverts, Patricia MacCormack. Part II Discourse: Queering, cripping, Todd R. Ramlow; Generic definitions: taxonomies of identity in AIDS discourse, Meredith Raimondo; Rethinking the place of queer and the erotic within geographies of sexualities, Jon Binnie; 'To play the sodomits': a query in 5 actions, Garrett P.J. Epp; Queer but classless?, Yvette Taylor; Queer-in the sociology of sport, Jayne Caudwell; 'Things that have the potential to go terribly wrong': homosexuality, paedophilia and the Kincora Boys' Home scandal, Margot Gayle Backus. Part III Normativity: Queer theory goes to Taiwan, Song Hwee Lim; Queer theory meets archaeology: disrupting epistemological privilege and heteronormativity in constructing the past, Thomas A. Dowson; A queer case of judicial diversity: sexuality, law and judicial studies, Leslie J. Moran; Queerying lesbian and gay psychology's 'coming of age': was the past just kids' stuff?, Peter Hegarty; 'Nothing to hide … nothing to fear': discriminatory surveillance and queer visibility in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Kathryn Conrad; Biologically queer, Myra J. Hird; The new queer cartoon, Noreen Giffney; Post-queer considerations, David V. Ruffolo. Part IV Relationality: Intimate counter-normativities: a queer analysis of personal life in the early 21st century, Sasha Roseneil; Queer middle ages, Steven F. Kruger; Smacking my bitch up: queer or what?, Nikki Sullivan; 'Quare' studies, or (almost) everything I know about queer studies I learned from my grandmother, E. Patrick Johnson; 'A strange perversity': bringing out desire between women in Frankenstein, Mair Rigby; Sex and the lubricative ethic, Dinesh Wadiwel; All Foucault and no knickers: assessing claims for a queer-political erotics, Tamsin Wilton. Index.

About the Editor: Noreen Giffney is the series editor of Queer Interventions at Ashgate Publishing. Her research focuses on queer theory, feminist theory, psychoanalysis, posthumanism and cultural studies. She is undertaking clinical training in psychoanalysis at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

Michael O’Rourke is the series editor of Queer Interventions at Ashgate Publishing. His research concentrates on the intersections between queer theory and Continental philosophy, especially Derrida, Delueze and Guattari, Ranciére, Foucault, Irigaray, Caputo and Nancy.

Reviews: 'This collection ambitiously convokes established and emerging scholars across a wide spectrum of disciplines to critically address, in new and original ways, the field of queer theory. Divided into major categories of queer concern: identity, discourse, normativity, and relationality, the essays chart genealogies, track changes, and pose questions about the travels of this elusive term, the work it does, and the challenges it faces.'
Carla Freccero, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA

'Far more than a retrospective reference work, this indispensable collection of essays does more than reassess most of the familiar themes in queer theory’s development over the past two decades. It takes the field in provocative new directions, suggesting many lines other than race, class, sexuality, and gender along which a critical queerness can perform its perversely enlightening operations.'
Susan Stryker, Indiana University, USA

'Those invigorated by the multiple facets and faces of queerness will welcome this handy, heady, interdisciplinary tome…Recommended.'
Choice

'The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory is a solid collection providing an overview of the past, present and future applications of queer theory. The Companion confidently lives up to its name as a research companion offering useful theories and methodologies for the reader to utilise queer theory in their own work…an absolute pleasure to read…'
M/C Reviews Culture & Media

'... this volume combats any real or perceived stagnation of Queer Theory…The book is essential reading for those looking for information beyond the usual Queer Theory 101 and who have not already exhausted the reading lists for its key contributors. It offers many leads for future theoretical explorations in both official research projects and one’s own private personal ponderings'.
Culture Health & Sexuality

'The cross-cultural and interdisciplinary dialogue creates a mosaic of voices from a wide range of disciplines that do not necessarily speak directly to one another, nor are predicated on the same theoretical slopes... Giffney does not simply acknowledge but enthusiastically embraces the contradictions and inaccuracies in the multiple approaches that fall under the rubric of queer theory, celebrating its slipperiness and resistance to definition while noting that it has somehow acquired a past and an institutionalised present... The volume contains fascinating chapters where the authors used queer concepts to interrogate the dominant cultural discourses within fields as diverse as archaeology and psychology... provides a compelling example of how normativity guides such supposedly scientific interpretations... We found some of the intersectionalities particularly inspiring and enlightening, especially Raimondo’s ‘queer reading of the down low controversy [that] offers important insight into the politics of normalization that can play out even in well-intentioned efforts to acknowledge diversity’... the breadth and range of the chapters collectively provide a bricolage of approaches that have been developed in response to queer studies from the 1990s onwards... One of the principal strengths of the book is the refusal to exclude critical and contradictory voices, which seems to be in line with the anti-essentialist, even messy and unruly nature of queer theory.'
Gender and Education

'Ashgate's Research Companions are designed specifically for scholars and graduate students. This one presents a sophisticated and thorough state-of-the-field in which the boundaries and definitions of queer are intensely negotiated. ... The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory is essential for research libraries supporting graduate programs and/or emphasis in gender, queer and women's studies... A provocative snapshot of the current wide-ranging state of queer studies, this necessarily slippery set of essays will whet the interest of any serious established or budding queer theorist.'
Feminist Collections

'This is an exciting collection and would be useful as a resource for teaching, as well as for what it offers experienced scholars.'
Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory

'... the Companion is a brilliantly edited, excitingly diverse collection... thematic anthologies are rarely of such quality, and there is much to learn from paying attention to this Research Companion's structure as well as to its contents.'
Julian Carter (California College of the Arts), Committee of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History Newsletter

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Full contents list

Introduction

Index