Critical Sexuality Studies, Lavender Languages, and Everyday Life

Critical Sexuality Studies (CSS) and Lavender Languages/Linguistics (LLL) are leading modes of inquiry in two different fields of sexuality studies. In this edited collection, chapters reveal how these can be combined to produce a new approach to analyzing language use, sexuality and gender, and discourse on authority and power.

The book demonstrates how together LLL and CSS iterate each other through their mutual concern with sexuality, gender, and power, especially when considering the materiality of daily life. Authors then compare CSS to other fields of sexuality studies to reveal commonalities and tensions that are addressed via the LLL-based interventions exemplified in this volume. The body of the book organizes examples of Lavender Languages projects around a four-part CSS framework, with an introductory essay for each section indicating the connections between the CSS theme and the LLL examples. The volume concludes with reflections showing how CSS interests in sexuality and power benefits from LLL with its emphasis on socially focused studies of discourse and text.

Strengthening pathways to future knowledge-making, this book provides a detailed roadmap for scholarly and activist engagements in language-centered critical sexuality studies.

Michelle Marzullo is Chair and Professor in the Human Sexuality Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies, USA.

William L. Leap is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at American University, USA, and Affiliate Professor in the Center for Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies at Florida Atlantic University, USA.