The concept of gender continues to be a central issue in literary and cultural studies, with a significance that crosses disciplinary boundaries and provokes lively debate. In this fully revised and updated second edition, David Glover and Cora Kaplan offer a lucid and illuminating introduction to ’gender’ and its implications, including:
- an overview of the critical language and concepts surrounding gender from their historical inception to contemporary debates
- discussions of the major theorists in the field updated and extended coverage of lesbian and queer theory
- a new glossary of terms essential to an understanding of the debate on gender in contemporary theory.
With its impressive breadth and depth of coverage, this volume offers not only a comprehensive history of this complex term, but also indicates its ongoing presence in literary and cultural theory and the new directions it is taking.
Introduction 1. Femininity and feminism 2. Masculinities 3. Queering the pitch 4. Readers and spectators Conclusion
Biography
David Glover is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Southampton. He is the author of Vampires, Mummies, and Liberals: Bram Stoker and the Politics of Popular Fiction (1996) and is Editor of the journal New Formations.
Cora Kaplan is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Southampton and Visiting Professor in the School of English and Drama, Queen Mary, University of London. She is the author of Sea Changes: Essays on Culture and Feminism (1986) and Victoriana: Histories, Fictions, Criticism (2007).
