Reading List

• The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks

• The Conundrum of Masculinity: Hegemony, Homosociality, Homophobia and Heteronormativity by Chris Haywood, Thomas Johansson

• Pop Masculinities: The Politics of Gender in Twenty-First Century Popular Music by Kai Arne Hansen

• Notes on Camp by Susan Sontag

• The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore

• Mythologies by Roland Barthes

• "Mattel, Malibu Stacy, and the Dialectics of the Barbie Polemic” by Charlie Squire

“Barbie Answers Oppenheimer” by Anne Helen Peterson

• “Always Be Optimizing” by Jia Tolentino

• “All things keep getting better: Queer Eye and the makeover of American masculinity” by Naveen Minai

• Cruel Optimism by Lauren Berlant

• Goblin Mode: How to Get Cozy, Embrace Imperfection, and Thrive in the Muck by Mckayla Coyle 

• Powers of Horror by Julia Kristeva 

• Sexual Subversions by Elizabeth Grosz

• Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism by Elizabeth Grosz

• “Why Are We So Horny for Blue Aliens?” by Chloe Joe in Bustle

• Remediation: Understanding New Media by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin

• The Duke and I by Julia Quinn

• Outlander series by Diana Gaboldon

• The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory

• The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang

• Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature by Janice Radway

• A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle-Class Desire by Janice Radway

• Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

• “From private pleasure to erotic - spectacle: Adapting Bridgerton to female audience desires” by Amber Davisson and Kyra Hunter

• Bringing Down the Duke by Evie Dunmore

• “Exploring the Invisible: Astronomy in the 70s” by Eric J. Chaisson

• “Why Star Wars worked for everyone” by Lisa Yaszek and Kathleen Goonan

• “How Hollywood became the unofficial propaganda arm of the U.S. military” by Tanner Mirrlees

• “Hollywood blacklist” by Allison Perlman

• “Critiquing Mass Culture” from Dialectic of Enlightenment by Adorno and Horkheimer

• “George Lucas Wrote 'Star Wars' as a Liberal Warning, Then Conservatives Struck Back” by Ryan Teague Beckwith

• The Female Complaint by Lauren Berlant

• Boublil and Schönberg’s Les Misérables by Sarah Whitfield

• The Practice of Everyday Life by Michel de Certeau

• “Empty Gestures: Performative Utterances and Allyship,” by Kelsey Blair

• “The I in Internet,” from Trick Mirror: Reflections on self delusion by Jia Tolentino

• The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life by Erving Goffman

• Doppelganger by Naomi Klein

• Bargain Bin Rom-Com by Leena Norms

• “Dear Sir, I Intend to Burn Your Book: An Anatomy of a Book Burning” by Lawrence Hill

• “Towards a History of the Term Anti-Semitism” by David Feldman

• Sorted: Growing Up, Coming Out, and Finding My Place by Jackson Bird

• “Young People Are Reading More Than You” by Lauren Ross and Hannah Withers

• “The Purity Chronicles” by Constance Grady

• “Girl Culture and the ‘Twilight’ Franchise” by Catherine Driscoll

• “Here’s how Dungeons & Dragons is changing for its new edition” by Griffin McElroy

• “Queering D&D” by Valerie Anne

• “Games, Storytelling, and Breaking the String” by Greg Costikyan

• Dread Trident: Tabletop Role-Playing Games and the Modern Fantastic by Curtis D. Carbonell

• “Sweet Potato: A Review of Its Past, Present, and Future Role in Human Nutrition” by Adelia Bovell-Benjamin

• “Is There Such Thing as Food Imperialism?” by Payal Dhar

• “Culinary Imperialism and the Hierarchies of Food” by Joe Kobuthi

• Nomporn: Queer Viewers and the TV that Soothes Us by Karen Tongson

• “Why everyone on Gilmore Girls talks a mile a minute” by Constance Grady

• “The Body and the Brand: How Lycra Shaped America” by Kaori O’Connor, in Producing Fashion, edited by Regina Lee Blaszczyk

• Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

• “Outdoor Voices Blurs the Lines Between Working Out and Everything Else” by Jia Tolentino

• “Self-optimisation: Conceptual, discursive and historical perspectives” by Daniel Nehring and Anja Röcke

• “Activewear: The Uniform of the Neoliberal Female Citizen” by Julie Brice and Holly Thorpe, in Sportswomen’s Apparel Around the World, edited by Linda K. Fuller

• How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell

• Saving Time by Jenny Odell

Duplan, Karine. “Pinkwashing Policies or Insider Activism? Allyship in the LGBTIQ+ Governance–Activism Nexus.” Queer(ing) Urban Planning and Municipal Governance 8, no. 2 (2023): 187-196.

Jagger, Karuna. “Think Before You Pink: Stop the Distraction.” HuffPost. Last updated December 6, 2017. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/think-before-you-pink-sto_b_5910696.

Michael Levitt, Patrick Jarenwattananon, and Ari Shapiro, hosts. “Corporations scale back shows of Pride support amid anti-trans and anti-gay laws.” All Things Considered. June 14, 2023. https://www.npr.org/programs/all-things-considered/2023/06/14/1182238329/all-things-considered-for-june-14-2023.

Schulman, Sarah. “Israel and ‘Pinkwashing’.” The New York Times. November 22, 2011. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/opinion/pinkwashing-and-israels-use-of-gays-as-a-messaging-tool.html.

Waxman, Olivia B. “How the Nazi Regime’s Pink Triangle Symbol was Repurposed for LGBTQ Pride.” TIME. May 31, 2018. https://time.com/5295476/gay-pride-pink-triangle-history/.https://time.com/5295476/gay-pride-pink-triangle-history/.