Wallace Shawn usually appears in our mind's eye as the consummate eccentric actor: the shy literature teacher in Clueless, the diabolically rational villain in The Princess Bride, or as the eponymous protagonist of Vanya on 42nd Street. This title offers a personal look into the life and literary work of this man.

Examines the external pressures and organizational problems within the Pacifica Foundation that led, in early 1999, to the police shutdown of network stations KPFA. This title calls it the worst crisis in the history of community radio. It is the story of Lewis Hill and the small band of pacifists who in 1946, set out to launch KPFA.

Who are queers and what do they want? Could it be that we are all queers? Beginning with such questions, William B. Turner's lucid and engaging book traces the roots of queer theory to the growing awareness that few of us precisely fit standard categories for sexual and gender identity.

Turner shows how Michel Foucault's work contributed to feminists' investigations into the ways that power relates to identity. In the last decades of the twentieth century, feminists were the first to challenge the assumption that a claim to universal identity -- the white male citizen -- should serve as the...

In this book, Moira Kenney makes the case that Los Angeles better represents the spectrum of gay and lesbian community activism and culture than cities with a higher gay profile. Owing to its sprawling geography and fragmented politics, Los Angeles lacks a single enclave like the Castro in San Francisco or landmarks as prominent as the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, but it has a long and instructive history of community building.

By tracking the terrain of the movement since the beginnings of gay liberation in 1960s Los Angeles, Kenney shows how activists laid claim to streets,...

St. Louis's story stands for the story of all those cities whose ambitions and civic self-image, forged from the growth of the mercantile and industrial eras, have been dramatically altered over time. More dramatically, perhaps, than most -- but in a manner shared by all -- St. Louis's changing economic base, shifting population and altered landscape have forced scholars, policymakers, and residents alike to acknowledge the transiency of what once seemed inexorable metropolitan trends: concentration, growth, accumulated wealth, and generally improved well-being.

In this book, Eric Sandweiss...

This wide-ranging book shows why Paul Longmore is one of the most respected figures in disability studies today. Understanding disability as a major variety of human experience, he urges us to establish it as a category of social, political, and historical analysis in much the same way that race, gender, and class already have been. The essays here search for the often hidden pattern of systemic prejudice and probe into the institutionalized discrimination that affects the one in five Americans with disabilities. Whether writing about the social critic Randolph Bourne, contemporary political...

Urges us to establish disability as a category of social, political, and historical analysis in much the same way that race, gender, and class already have been. The essays on bioethics and public policy examine the conflict of agendas between disability rights activists and non-disabled policy makers, healthcare professionals, and others.