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Unlike the fat body of Iros, παχύς bodies in Homeric poetry are powerful, attractive, and consistent with a non-gender- specific conception of the erotic. In Odyssey 18, Iros' bulk belies his lack of strength, but Odysseus' large frame, elsewhere described as παχύς, both promises and delivers effective action. A threat of castration distances Iros from the erotic; Odysseus enjoys sexual intimacy with several characters. Penelope exercises seductive charms over the suitors in book 18, shortly after being described as παχύς; the description of her "παχύς hand" at 21.6 suggests both bulk and strength. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on Oscar Wilde's collected works to convey new insights about how he is depicted in biofiction, with a focus on Louis Edwards's 2003 novel Oscar Wilde Discovers America. Edwards creates a protagonist who underplays Wilde's marginalization and who struggles to see the interplay between gender, nationality, and race. The distance between character, author, and text facilitates Edwards's interrogation of biofiction itself—its biases, its lapses, and its opportunities. In part one of my analysis, I track the Judas Kiss motif across works by Wilde and within Edwards's reimagining to discuss how biofiction itself hinges on reversal and betrayal. In part two, I examine how Edwards's biofiction corrects for the historical homosociality of life-writing by surfacing the suffering of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay rereads Ernest Hemingway's The Garden of Eden as a dildonic text using Paul Preciado's theorization of dildonics and prosthetic gender. Catherine Bourne's (un)becoming(s) in the published and manuscript versions of the novel are a depiction of a body authoring itself, supplemented by numerous dildos or dildonic operations: fingers, hair, clothes, and visits to Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights. Rereading Hemingway in the aftermath of the nonidentitary grammar of Preciado's dildonics creates another field of play for the Hemingway industry and the Hemingway reader: Hemingway as theorist of prosthetic gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reads Helen Phillips's extraordinary novel of motherhood, The Need (2019), alongside recent theorists of post-politics. Phillips's novel is illuminating because it reveals how an adequate understanding of the post-political requires supplementing current accounts with the categories of gender and heterogeneous time. The Need subverts the postfeminist articulation of politics as an arena in which "feminism" is practicable only in preemptively curtailed and diminished form. It does so by cracking open the "reality" enforced by neoliberal motherhood to show how its apparent solidity rests on the excision of alternate times—on a foreclosure of the temporal otherness that is the condition for historical change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a comparison between the 1808 novel "Secret History; or, The Horrors of St. Domingo," by Leonora Sansay and the novel "Zelica, the Creole," which was anonymously published in 1820. Topics covered include the books' depiction of the Haitian revolution, an insight provided by both books into perceptions of race and gender during the revolutionary period, and their lack of perspectives of women of color.

The article focuses on poet Rosamund Marriott Watson's ballad of giantesses as a revision of Algernon Charles Swinburne's "Song in Time of Revolution, 1860" and explores the various ways in which the intersections of gender and genre in the two poems are informed by and underpin specific chronotopes of revolution. It mentions compare their approaches to the border ballad, revolution, and history as a whole; and also mentions local-historical, mythical, border ballads emphasize people in action.

ABSTRACT This article explains why and how John Dryden chose to break with narrative tradition in making his Cressida faithful in Troilus and Cressida, or, Truth Found Too Late (1679), one of three of his reworkings of Shakespeare. Dryden goes beyond his predecessors' misogynistic satires to explore interiority and substantive psychology in his characterization of Cressida and Andromache. In so doing, he extends Shakespeare's bitter critique of military heroism, especially in its pretenses concerning, and consequences for, women. In its handling of gender politics and masculine combativeness, it is of a piece with most of Dryden's serious plays and his writing throughout his career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism is provided of the American historical fiction novels "Cloudsplitter" by James McBride and "The Good Lord Bird," by Russell Banks. Particular focus is given to the books' depiction of the 19th century radical abolitionist John Brown, including gender-related themes and Brown's brother Owen Brown's masculine identity. It briefly discusses the implications of John Brown for the future of radical social movements, within the context of the aforementioned fiction.

A literary criticism is provided on the 1967 novel "Down These Mean Streets," by the Puerto Rican American author Piri Thomas. Particular focus is given to the novel's depiction of interethnic solidarity between Black Americans and Black people from Latin America, racial hierarchy in the U.S. and gender. The book's portrayal of the racial identity of Black people is discussed.

In keeping with the allusive density of Melville's writings, "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids" provides readers with a complementary pair of sketches highlighting a gamut of issues relating to gender, sexuality, domesticity, industrialization, and Anglo-American social, cultural, and economic relations. The present essay argues that the ultimate aim of the paired sketches was to educate the reader by dramatically juxtaposing scenes of (English) male privilege and (American) female oppression, showing that the latter was a truer indicator of the human condition; moreover, the second sketch provided a probing and comprehensive survey of the ruthless exploitation of female workers in one of the hundreds of industrial mills established in New England during the antebellum era. With his title drawing on a neglected tradition of proverbial wisdom, Melville incorporated a host of biblical and other religious allusions in his paired sketches in order to enhance the paradigmatic impact of his social and moral critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses several novels including "Orlando" by Virginia Woolf, "Gender Trouble" by Judith Butler, and "Trans Liberation" by Leslie Feinberg. "Orlando" highlights transnational modernism and questions gender and sexual identity in the 20th century. It talks about the use of the prefix 'trans' in understanding of gender and its relevance in literary studies. It states that most of the U.S. forms of identification require a definitive statement about gender.

This article addresses the theme of gender, sexuality, and information by considering how libraries might offer readers' advisory services to young readers in socially just ways. Readers' advisory is a service found in public and school libraries. In readers' advisory, librarians recommend materials to library visitors who are often young readers. Though libraries are commonly perceived as neutral, apolitical institutions, this article shows how readers' advisory in libraries is a site of struggle and contestation for young readers in terms of their gender identity and sexuality. Drawing from the works of Nikolas Rose and Michel Foucault, the authors show how readers' advisory is a technique of self-assembly where young readers negotiate their self-identities amid surrounding library discourses. The authors provide several reasons why readers' advisory approaches, as they are presented in professional library literature, are problematic. As an alternative conceptualization of readers' advisory, this article then proposes what is dubbed a disjunctional approach. The authors explain what this approach is, provide concrete examples of how it might be adopted, and suggest avenues for further study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recognition of a spectrum of gendered and sexed people, along with changing social conventions, has caused disruption in the absolute and binary divisions between male and female, man and woman. Gender and sex are formally classified for many purposes; however, formal classifications can marginalize people with variable sex or those who do not identify with traditional understandings of gender. However, the instability is not a recent development, as demonstrated by historically changing conceptualizations of sex and gender in bibliographic classification as well as in competing and interacting formal discourses. A discourse analysis was conducted on the concepts of women, trans, and intersex people in four editions of the Dewey Decimal Classification system as well as on relevant American legal discourse to investigate how institutionally endorsed epistemology and ontology work together to influence how concepts are defined and classified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including issues of racial segregation among librarians, concept of academic librarianship and trends of gender and sex in literature.

A literary criticism of the novel "The House of Mirth" by Edith Wharton is presented. It examines the sexuality of the novel's main character Lily Bart, where the author argues that sexuality must one of the factors that is explored more thoroughly. It explores the ideas of cultural intelligibility and unintelligibility of American philosopher Judith Butler, as well as her theory of performativity.

A literary criticism of the 1795 novel "El engaño feliz" by Mariano Madramany y Calatayud is presented. A brief profile of Madramany is provided who published books to complement his career as a lawyer. The themes of the novel are examined as well as the emotions portrayed, honor, gender, and translation during the Enlightenment period in Spain.

The article focuses on epigrammatic speech as popularized by Oscar Wilde and its relationship to gender and masculinity, particularly in the context of the hard-boiled detective novel. Topics mentioned include Wilde's trial for charges of homosexuality, Raymond Chandler's influence on shaping the image of the private eye in American literature, and the prevalence of epigrammatic speech in detective novels.

The article presents literary criticism of the book "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" by Gertrude Stein. Particular focus is given to the relationship between visual perspective, gender, and sexuality in the book. Details on the book's depictions of Stein's short haircut are presented. Topics discussed include masculinity and modernism.

The article discusses the role of New York City in developing movements supporting both sides of imperialism and colonization, focusing on ideas of Puerto Rican writer Giannina Braschi in her books "Empire of Dreams" and "United States of Banana." Other topics include literary representation of gender dysfunction in New York, colonial-imperial relations in the the Americas, and the status of Puerto Rico vis-à-vis the U.S.

The article uses a sensory studies approach to examine gender and sexuality in nine books written by William Faulkner. It discusses how the characters use their senses of smell and sometimes sense of taste to navigate different social values concerning gender and sexual taboos. Some of Faulkner's books examined include "Light in August," "The Hamlet," and "Go Down, Moses."

A literary criticism is presented of several 18th century short stories and poems, including the short stories "The Genuine and Most Surprizing Adventures of a Very Unfortunate Goose-Quill" and "The Adventures of a Goose-Quill. In the Manner of Mrs. Midnight’s Tye-Wig” and the poem "From a Sheet of Gilt Paper to Cloe," by Sarah Dixon. Particular focus is given to the narratives written from the perspective of goose quills, paper and pens, including in regard to gender and materiality.

Newer critical treatments of Redburn argue that its significance lies in its critique of antebellum slavery, most saliently in chapter 31, in which Wellingborough Redburn, the fi rst-person narrator, offers an ekphrastic depiction of the Nelson Monument in Liverpool, England. This monument contains an especially significant detail: the four naked, chained male fi gures at the base of the pedestal. Redburn tells us that he can never look at their "swarthy limbs and manacles, without being involuntarily reminded of four African slaves in the market-place." The abjection of the fi gures is significant for understanding not only issues of race and slavery but also the queer aspects of Redburn: the vulnerability of younger males in the grip of more powerful, older males. This essay examines the connections between Melville's striking thematization of race and his representation of gender and same-sex sexuality. Race discourse here functions as a coded means of expressing and negotiating the difficulties of same-sex desire, informed by Melville's awareness of the sodomitical shipboard practices that he, throughout his work, suggested with alternate slyness and horror. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1971, a group of radical students at University High School in West Los Angeles began publishing the Red Tide newspaper. Using the Tide and oral histories of alumni, this article analyzes the relationship between feminism and youth culture in the early 1970s. It argues that the Tide's authors successfully tied together strains of women's liberation, 1960s movement cultures, and the counterculture; through their activities they integrated this synthesis with the youth culture of their community. As explored in this article, a feminist youth culture charted alternatives to the norms of adult authorities, and provided students with peer-driven discussion of sex, sexual orientation, and gender roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism is presented of the short story "Vecchie inglesi" from the collection "Stampe dell'800" by author Aldo Palazzeschi. It analyzes the depiction of old English women in Florence, Italy and the performance of gender and sexual difference. Other topics include dressing in drag, the subversive aspects of laughter, and misogyny.

This article argues that the medieval Scandinavian valkyrie and shield-maiden, overlapping categories of warrior, are best understood as a third gender, a hybrid of masculine and feminine attributes. Found in a variety of texts, myths, and legends of heroes, for example, these figures are clad in masculine attire, armor, and weapons, and exercise masculine power as they fight and choose who will die in battle. At the same time, linguistic markers, literary devices, and other of their activities mark them as feminine. The article further argues that the shield-maiden who chooses a male spouse subsequently transitions from the third gender to the feminine gender. As a consequence, she loses many of the powerful abilities of a warrior woman, along with her armor and weapons. Furthermore, her subjectivity is altered so that it is founded and dependent on that of her husband. When he dies, she is left with a diminished social network that, given the construction of subjectivity in this medieval context, leaves her personhood diminished as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In opposition to readings of The First Part of Henry the Fourth, The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, and The Life of Henry the Fifth that see the plays' male-dominated worlds as an erasure of Elizabeth, this essay demonstrates that England's queen in fact powerfully shapes Henry IV and Hal. These plays present a fantasy of a regenerated, revitalized Elizabeth, and this essay argues that our reading of the Henriad's gender politics and of Shakespeare's treatment of Elizabeth, maternity, and feminine political power must therefore change. Furthermore, this essay deepens our understanding of the synergy between Shakespeare's comedies and histories, exploring how these genres responded to their cultural moment during the 1590s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how two of statius' late works--the Achilleid and Silvae 3.4, composed roughly contemporaneously--use their central characters for similar explorations of issues of gender and genre. Both poems feature boys whose journeys to manhood are arrested by detours into situations with troubled gender boundaries: Achilles' stay on scyros as a girl and an imperial eunuch's celebration of a rite of passage into adulthood. similarities in plot, character, and language invite a close reading of both poems together as part of the poet's exploration of the genre boundaries so intimately connected with epic's self-definition through gender and masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's insights on the importance of identifying effective transgender (trans) novels for adolescent readers. The author mentions that effective trans novels for young adults provide safe space wherein they can consider the arbitrary of the nature of gender. She provides novels which she considered to be the most effective and realistic trans novels including "Choir Boy," by Charlie Jane Anders, "I am J," by Cris Beam, and "Being Emily," by Rachel Gold.

The article focuses on the topics of families and gender in the works of Swedish picturebook author-illustrator Pija Lindenbaum. It says that the theme of all books of Lindenbaum places the child character in the center of the event. It explores the child character named Mini Mina in Lindenbaum's book including "Mini Mia and Her Darling Uncle," saying that the character deals with jealousy over the new partner of her uncle.

An essay is presented on rereading of Henry James' novel "The Bostonian" in the publication "Century" to reconstruct the reading strategies and cultural preoccupations that made "The Bostonians" anathema in 1885-1886. It discusses how the novel challenged the poetics of installment fiction and the conventions of discourse for controversial issues like gender, slavery and national reconciliation. It discusses an analysis of the implications depicted in the novel "The Bostonians."

The article presents the convergence of race, gender and human sexuality in the novel "Light in August," by William Faulkner, which is included, together with his other novels "The Sound and the Fury" and "As I Lay Dying," in Oprah Winfrey's Summer Book Club in 2005. Topics discussed include a comparison of Faulkner's novels, an overview of Winfrey's personal and professional background, and how Faulkner treated race in his novels. The inter-racial sex in "Light in August" is depicted.

The article presents literary criticism of the book "Oroonoko" by Aphra Behn. Particular focus is given to Behn's treatment of political obligation, sovereignty, and assent in the novella. Details on the relationship between domestic and imperial spaces in the text are also presented. Other topics include race, gender, authority, and ethics.

The article analyzes Marghanita Laski's novel "To Bed With Grand Music," which explores issues of gender expectations and uses popular understandings of food consumption as a vehicle to approach topics of female sexuality and sexual agency. In this novel, Laski allegedly addresses the issues of wartime sexuality and of infidelity in a more nuanced and neutral manner. The novel's success reportedly lies in the consistent refusal by Deborah to adhere to the wartime expectations for women.

The article focuses on Olive Moore's "Spleen," described as a difficult and allusive novel that explores the constraints of language through the prism of deviant gender and sexuality. It cites that the novel's text utilizes the trope of reproduction to interrogate gendered ideas of bodily normalcy and to examine the narrative implications of the idea of pregnancy as a model for women's experimentalism. In this novel, the practice and production of art is said to be aligned with masculinity.

This essay reexamines Richard Brinsley Sheridan's Pizarro (1799), shifting away from the critical tendency to focus on Rolla's speech as a reuse of Sheridan's speech against Warren Hastings to consider instead the significance of Sarah Siddons's performance in the role of Elvira. Drawing on Jacky Bratton's insights into embodied theatre histories and Marvin Carlson's theory of celebrity ghosting, I argue that Sheridan adapted Kotzebue's play with Siddons's abilities and status in mind, and that her prominence as one of the greatest actors of her generation and as an icon of British womanhood created an emphasis on remorse, thus weakening the monolithic nature of the British colonial project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents literary criticism of the book "Absalom, Absalom!" by William Faulkner. Particular focus is given to the roles of modernism, domestic labor, and femininity in the novel. According to the author, Faulkner challenges the Southern Belle ideal of femininity and promotes an engaged rather than ambiguous relationship with household work. Topics discussed include sewing, subjectivity, and the effects of the U.S. Civil War on gender relations.

An essay is presented which examines the relationship between gender and subjectivity in the work of British poet William Wordsworth, focusing specifically on Book Seven of the poem "The Prelude. It explores the depiction of gender and sexuality in Romantic literature overall as well as Wordsworth's poems set in the city of London, England. The author discusses how Wordsworth's views of sexuality in London can be analyzed from a feminist critique perspective.

Triangulating genre, gender, and performance, this paper expands Hamlet criticism by examining Ophelia's mad ballads through the lens of popular culture. While ballads perpetuated the vigorous performance practices that Hamlet disparages as vulgar, this paper argues that Shakespeare exploits precisely these "low" aspects of the ballad to produce the tragedy of Ophelia's madness. Shakespeare uses ballads to establish a privileged relationship between Ophelia and the audience and to stage a gender-based critique of Elsinore. In conversation with Hamlet's elitism, Ophelia's ballads demonstrate that Shakespeare simultaneously delegitimizes popular performance and embraces its theatrical possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism of the works of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and "On Agate Hill" by Lee Smith is presented, focusing on issues of gender criticism in contemporary Southern women's literature. Other topics include an analysis of the relationship between gender issues and colleges and universities, Bourdieu's ideas about cultural capital, and analysis of the social constructions of gender.

Joseph Brodsky's 1992 poem "Lullaby" is a key text in furthering the discussion on Brodsky's poetic preoccupation with time: the image of the Christ child surrounded by the desert is an image of finite time surrounded by the infinite. The poem also represents a unique attempt in Brodsky's oeuvre to speak extendedly in a female voice. In its original Russian, the poem's language goes out of its way to identify the speaker as a woman, reinforcing the speaker's separateness from both her son and the poet, and insufficient critical attention has been paid to the reasons for and effects of this heavily feminized monologue. In addition to thematic discussions, this paper will address how Brodsky uses prosody to transform the poem itself into a physical embodiment of time and gender. The poem's ability to create and reinforce two fundamental aspects of human identity, gender and temporality, fosters in its readers a heightened sense of their own uniqueness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the contribution of author Elizabeth Fox-Genovese to the field of Southern Studies, focusing on the diversity of her perspectives. Some of the titles mentioned include "Ghosts and Memories: White and Black Southern Women's Lives and Writings," "Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South" and "History & Women, Culture & Faith: Selected Writings of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese." Other topics include themes from Fox-Genovese's work including class, economics, and gender, her contributions to women's history, and an overview of her career as an author.

Presents a bibliography of select journal articles, essay collections and books concerning William Faulkner and gender. Includes `Horror and Perverse Delight: Faulkner's `A Rose for Emily',' by Dennis W. Allen; `Much Ado About Nothing: Language and Desire in `The Sound and the Fury',' by Deborah E. Barker and Ivo Kamps.

Explores the concepts of gender, genre and realism in George Eliot's "Adam Bede.' Suggestion that the novel's domestic closure is achieved by a conscientious appropriation or sacrifice; Details on the descriptive tropes and plot trajectories assigned by generic convention of 'masculinity' and 'femininity'; Eliot's use of role reversal to create a genuine female subjectivity and a field of action; The alternative genre and the possibility for female activity.

The article explores works examining the poetry of English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne. Topics discussed include how Swinburne's poetry is treated in Julie Casanova's "Gender and Chronotypes of Revolution in the Border Ballads of Swinburne and Marriott Watson," and observation on Natalie Prizel's "Intersex Aestheticism and Transgenre Mediation: Swinburne's Ekphrastic Androgynes," which focuses on Swinburne's ekphrastic verse in relation to gender.