Do we need bodies for sex? Is gender in the head or in the body? In Second Skins Jay Prosser reveals the powerful drive that leads men and women literally to shed their skins and--in flesh and head--to cross the boundary of sex. Telling their story is not merely an act that comes after the fact, it's a force of its own that makes it impossible to forget that stories of identity inhabit autobiographical bodies.

In this stunning first extensive study of transsexual autobiography, Jay Prosser examines the exchanges between body and narrative that constitute the phenomenon of...

Do we need bodies for sex? Is gender in the head or in the body? In Second Skins Jay Prosser reveals the powerful drive that leads men and women literally to shed their skins and--in flesh and head--to cross the boundary of sex. Telling their story is not merely an act that comes after the fact, it's a force of its own that makes it impossible to forget that stories of identity inhabit autobiographical bodies.

In this stunning first extensive study of transsexual autobiography, Jay Prosser examines the exchanges between body and narrative that constitute the phenomenon of...

The Well of Loneliness--the Radclyffe Hall novel at times referred to as "the bible of lesbianism"--was released in Britain in 1928 and was immediately controversial. Pronounced obscene following a sensational trial, the book has become a cultural icon as well as a source of considerable debate, especially among feminists, lesbians, and transgendered persons.

Palatable Poison gathers together classic essays on Radclyffe Hall's book--beginning with Havelock Ellis and early reviews--as well as pieces by such contemporary critics as Esther Newton, Judith Halberstam, Teresa de...

The Well of Loneliness--the Radclyffe Hall novel at times referred to as "the bible of lesbianism"--was released in Britain in 1928 and was immediately controversial. Pronounced obscene following a sensational trial, the book has become a cultural icon as well as a source of considerable debate, especially among feminists, lesbians, and transgendered persons.

Palatable Poison gathers together classic essays on Radclyffe Hall's book--beginning with Havelock Ellis and early reviews--as well as pieces by such contemporary critics as Esther Newton, Judith Halberstam, Teresa de...

When we look at a photograph we see a moment that is no more. Photographs place reality into the past tense, representing not memory but memory's loss. They are not conduits for the return of memory, but memento mori: reminders of the fact of death itself. And it is in this, Jay Prosser tells us, that we find the gift of photography. Engaging the photographic reflections of figures as different as Roland Barthes and Claude Levi-Strauss, Gordon Parks and Elizabeth Bishop, Light in the Dark Room offers a vision of photography as realization of loss--and a revelation of how photographs can shed...