Margaret Mead Made Me Gay: Personal Essays, Public Ideas

Esther Newton

Published by Duke University Press 2000

Margaret Mead Made Me Gay

Personal Essays, Public Ideas

Esther Newton
Edited by: Michèle Aina Barale , Michael Moon , Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Jonathan Goldberg
With contributions by: Judith Halberstam

In the series Series Q

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822381341

Overview
Contents

About this book

A collection of essays by a pioneering queer anthropologist.

Author / Editor information

Esther Newton is Professor of Anthropology and Kempner Distinguished Professor at State University of New York at Purchase. She is the author of several books, including Mother Camp, a groundbreaking study of American drag queens, and Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty Years in America’s First Gay and Lesbian Town. Among other distinctions, she was Scholarly Advisor for the documentary film Paris Is Burning, a founding member of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center, and member of the Advisory Group for Stonewall History Project.

Reviews

“Esther Newton is, quite simply, a pioneering figure in researching contemporary queer populations, as well as one of the most important voices in post WWII anthropology. We are very fortunate to finally have her essays assembled into an accessible collection. This anthology is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in late twentieth-century anthropology, feminism, gay and lesbian studies, gender and sexuality, and the social science of everyday life.”—Gayle Rubin

“Esther Newton’s work . . . has changed anthropology, feminist studies, and queer studies in remarkable ways. . . . Newton’s methodological innovation has less to do with crafting new empirical tools and more to do with a creative and inspired mode of listening and participating in the cultures she studies.”—from the Foreword by Judith Halberstam

“I was looking for any way out, some Mad Hatter to lead me down a rabbit hole into a world where I didn't have to carry a clutch purse and want to be dominated by some guy with a crew cut and no neck...So that when I read Coming of Age in Samoa, my senior year in college, I was, to put it mildly, receptive."”—from the Introduction by Esther Newton

“This is a wonderful collection. Newton is a powerful intellectual whose reflections on her own work not only illuminate her life but also the relation between the academy and the social movements of the last thirty years.”—Elizabeth L. Kennedy, author of Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community

“[Margaret Mead Made Me Gay] is honest, moving on the personal level and provocative on the academic level.”

-- Toni McNaron Women's Review of Books

“[A] collection of highly readable, aways provocative essays.”

-- Michael Schwartz Gay & Lesbian Review

“[G]roundbreaking. . . . Newton has contributed a brilliant collection that will enrich and promote the field of gender studies.”

-- B. Medicine Choice

“This butch can write! Ranging from the witty and playful to the most seriously analytical, her prose is always precise, rich, felicitous, never marred by postmodern neologisms or other jargon. . . . Not only anthropologists, but historians, sociologists, and psychologists, all thos who value gay studies, will find much to delight and to ponder in this stimulating volume.”

-- Jeffrey M. Dickemann CLGH Newsletter

“This collection of essays by cultural anthropologist Esther Newton can be considered an intellectual autobiography. . . . Always thought provoking and interesting, Newton never descends into the dryness of academic writing like many others, which makes it accessible to everyone.”

-- Lambda Book Report

“A welcome collection of Esther Newton’s research and personal essays . . . . This volume is both provocative and accessible enough to be used successfully in undergraduate courses on field methods, women’s movements, and gay and lesbian studies. It may also be a stimulating resource in a graduate course on professional socialization in anthropology or sociology. This book can serve as a compelling example of the epistemological complexities of feminist memoir projects. . . . Overall this book will be of benefit to anyone who is interested in queer and/or feminist ethnography . . . .”

-- Jane Ward Gender & Society

“This collection—an intellectual genealogy of Newton’s work from the last 30 years—reveals the prescience and durability of her earliest writings. . . . Her newer pieces prove just as stimulating and vital.”

-- Publishers Weekly

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Foreword The Butch Anthropologist Out in the Field Judith Halberstam Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Foreword On Being Different: An Appreciation William L. Leap Publicly Available Download PDF	xix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xxiii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART I : DRAG AND CAMP
From the Appendix to Mother Camp, Field Methods (1972) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	11
Role Models (1972) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	14
Preface to the Phoenix Edition of Mother Camp (1979) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	30
Theater: Gay Anti-Church—More Notes on Camp (1992/1999) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	34
Dick(less) Tracy and the Homecoming Queen: Lesbian Power and Representation in Gay Male Cherry Grove (1996) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	63
PART II : LESBIAN-FEMINISM
High School Crack-up (1973) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	93
Marginal Woman/Marginal Academic (1973) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
The Personal Is Political: Consciousness Raising and Personal Change in the Women’s Liberation Movement (with Shirley Walton; 1971) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	113
Excerpt from Womenfriends (with Shirley Walton; 1976) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	142
Will the Real Lesbian Community Please Stand Up? (1982/1998) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
PART III : BUTCH
The Misunderstanding: Toward a More Precise Sexual Vocabulary (with Shirley Walton; 1984), Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
The Mythic Mannish Lesbian: Radclyffe Hall and the New Woman (1984) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	176
Beyond Freud, Ken, and Barbie (1986) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
My Butch Career: A Memoir (1996) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	195
PART IV: QUEER ANTHROPOLOGY
DMS: The Outsider’s Insider (1995) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	215
Too Queer for College: Notes on Homophobia (1987) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
An Open Letter to ‘‘Manda Cesara’’ (1984) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
Of Yams, Grinders, and Gays: The Anthropology of Homosexuality (1988) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	229
Lesbian and Gay Issues in Anthropology: Some Remarks to the Chairs of Anthropology Departments (1993) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	238
My Best Informant’s Dress: The Erotic Equation in Fieldwork (1992) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	243
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	259
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	293
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	311

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Pages
- Main content: 360
Illustrations
- Other: 23 photographs

eBook

Published: November 22, 2000
ISBN: 9780822381341