Queer : : a Graphic History

Locations
Call Number: 306.766 Ba, Adult Book / Nonfiction / Social Science / Gender Studies / Barker, Meg-John
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Traverwood Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	306.766 Ba	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Social Science / Gender Studies / Barker, Meg-John	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Social Science / Gender Studies / Barker, Meg-John	4-week checkout	Due 05-24-2024

"Activist-academic Meg John Barker and cartoonist Julia Scheele illuminate the histories of queer thought and LGBTQ+ action in this groundbreaking non-fiction graphic novel. A kaleidoscope of characters from the diverse worlds of pop-culture, film, activism and academia guide us on a journey through the ideas, people and events that have shaped &#x;queer theory&#x;. From identity politics and gender roles to privilege and exclusion, Queer explores how we came to view sex, gender and sexuality in the ways that we do; how these ideas get tangled up with our culture and our understanding of biology, psychology and sexology; and how these views have been disputed and challenged. Along the way we look at key landmarks which shift our perspective of what's normal, such as Alfred Kinsey's view of sexuality as a spectrum between heterosexuality and homosexuality, Judith Butler's view of gendered behavior as a performance, the play Wicked, which reinterprets characters from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, or moments in Casino Royale when we're invited to view James Bond with the kind of desiring gaze usually directed at female bodies in mainstream media,"--Amazon.com.
Though not a graphic novel, this high illustrated nonfiction book explores how we came to view sex, gender and sexuality in the ways that we do. Barker and Scheele show how these ideas get tangled up with our culture and our understanding of biology, psychology and sexology; and how these views have been disputed and challenged. Each page focuses on a specific aspect of the subject.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

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Summary / Annotation
Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

It's good! submitted by purplewaves on July 19, 2018, 9:24pm While it's not perfect - you'll run into things many people (or you yourself!) will disagree with - it IS an accessible, interesting introduction to queer studies, queer theory, and queer activism. However, I will say that one claim toward the beginning is flat out untrue: "queer" is not a totally reclaimed term, and there are many people who sincerely dislike its use (especially by straight and cisgendered people) who aren't just old.

It's kinda great that we have such history like this now that there's a need for such a primer. submitted by lisa on July 20, 2020, 2:42pm "Queer" has tremendous advantages, beyond the joy of reclaiming. Perhaps most primarily, it's a great umbrella term, and queer activism is a big tent. People joke-complain about all the initials in LGBTQQAA etc., but "queer"'ll do, to my mind.

More History Than Philosophy; A Deep Read submitted by Meginator on June 11, 2023, 6:13pm This nonfiction book is less of a history book, per se, and more of an introduction to queer studies and queer theory, although the development of those areas is very much an area of focus. Despite the intellectually rigorous subject matter, the book is relatively easy to follow due to its organization; each page explains a single idea, and most are dominated by large illustrations rather than walls of incomprehensible text. While the text does a great job of breaking down big, confusing ideas into smaller, more easily graspable pieces, the illustrations often don’t add much to the reader’s understanding; at times, it feels like the graphic component exists to pad out the book and give it a unique selling point rather than to deepen the readers’ understanding or help explain some of the trickier ideas in the text. This becomes even more apparent with the occasional illustrations that do complement the text especially well. Although the graphic component is incredibly disappointing, I do think that this book offers a solid and accessible introduction to the topic that not only explains the history, development, and core tenets of queer theory but also empowers readers to sit with them and come to their own conclusions about the ideas presented within the book.

Lots of issues/ problems submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on June 24, 2023, 8:27pm I’m having a bit of a hard time figuring out how to rate this book. I recognize that I don’t know enough about Queer Theory to judge the content myself. So here are several different ways that I experienced this graphic novel:

First, the title (_Queer: A Graphic History_) does not in any way convey that this is a history of Queer Theory. This book is incredibly dense, and reads like your most boring college-level textbook. Granted, because of its length and goal of summarizing a massive amount of work into a short summary, it moves through vast swaths of people and work quickly and summarized into a paragraph or page, but the concepts and content are wordy, deep, and (to my well-read but no longer academic self) close to incomprehensible.

Second, I can’t find any good reason that this was a graphic novel. Very few of the illustrations genuinely added new information beyond the written text. Every second or third page had a picture of a queer theorist and a speech bubble (which we were told was to be understood as a summary of one of their ideas, and not as a quote). But unless we are to judge them based on appearances, how does each theorist’s face add to our knowledge? Other images simply matched descriptions already on the page, or were of people standing around talking, or something else unengaging and literal. If you removed all the images that did not add to the content (and shifted the written content of that back into typed text), I think the book would be about half its current size and so dense that few would pick it up.

Third, while I don’t know much of anything about Queer Theory, it strikes me as problematic that when Barker gets to “Criticism and Tensions,” the first one they identify is that “Queer theory has therefore been criticized for ‘white-washing’, and an ongoing rigorous analysis of how queer theory and activism is structured by whiteness is required.” Notice the passive voice (“has been criticized”)? Barker spends the early part of the book identifying people (all white) whose theories contribute to Queer Theory but would never have identified themselves as queer theorists, then in Criticisms, notes the person who named QT, who “put race right at the heart of the endeavour because sexual subjectivity is shaped by race just as much as gender.” If race is so critical, why do the first 125 pages of the book leave it out? And why should I trust anything else, if Barker would leave out something THIS integral?

Other reviews (especially by self-identified queer people) say that the content misses a lot. I don’t know enough to say, but I did not enjoy this book or think that the format helped convey the points it was trying to make. Though I learned a little, I don’t know if I even learned the right and useful things about “queer theory.” I do not recommend this book.