Home Margaret Mead Made Me Gay
book: Margaret Mead Made Me Gay
Book
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Margaret Mead Made Me Gay

Personal Essays, Public Ideas
  • Esther Newton
  • Edited by: Michèle Aina Barale , Michael Moon , Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Jonathan Goldberg
  • With contributions by: Judith Halberstam
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2000
View more publications by Duke University Press
Series Q
This book is in the series

About this book

A collection of essays by a pioneering queer anthropologist.

Author / Editor information

Esther Newton is Professor of Anthropology and Kempner Distinguished Professor at State University of New York at Purchase. She is the author of several books, including Mother Camp, a groundbreaking study of American drag queens, and Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty Years in America’s First Gay and Lesbian Town. Among other distinctions, she was Scholarly Advisor for the documentary film Paris Is Burning, a founding member of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center, and member of the Advisory Group for Stonewall History Project.

Reviews

“Esther Newton is, quite simply, a pioneering figure in researching contemporary queer populations, as well as one of the most important voices in post WWII anthropology. We are very fortunate to finally have her essays assembled into an accessible collection. This anthology is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in late twentieth-century anthropology, feminism, gay and lesbian studies, gender and sexuality, and the social science of everyday life.”—Gayle Rubin

“Esther Newton’s work . . . has changed anthropology, feminist studies, and queer studies in remarkable ways. . . . Newton’s methodological innovation has less to do with crafting new empirical tools and more to do with a creative and inspired mode of listening and participating in the cultures she studies.”—from the Foreword by Judith Halberstam

“I was looking for any way out, some Mad Hatter to lead me down a rabbit hole into a world where I didn't have to carry a clutch purse and want to be dominated by some guy with a crew cut and no neck...So that when I read Coming of Age in Samoa, my senior year in college, I was, to put it mildly, receptive."”—from the Introduction by Esther Newton

“This is a wonderful collection. Newton is a powerful intellectual whose reflections on her own work not only illuminate her life but also the relation between the academy and the social movements of the last thirty years.”—Elizabeth L. Kennedy, author of Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community

“[Margaret Mead Made Me Gay] is honest, moving on the personal level and provocative on the academic level.”

-- Toni McNaron Women's Review of Books

“[A] collection of highly readable, aways provocative essays.”

-- Michael Schwartz Gay & Lesbian Review

“[G]roundbreaking. . . . Newton has contributed a brilliant collection that will enrich and promote the field of gender studies.”

-- B. Medicine Choice

“This butch can write! Ranging from the witty and playful to the most seriously analytical, her prose is always precise, rich, felicitous, never marred by postmodern neologisms or other jargon. . . . Not only anthropologists, but historians, sociologists, and psychologists, all thos who value gay studies, will find much to delight and to ponder in this stimulating volume.”

-- Jeffrey M. Dickemann CLGH Newsletter

“This collection of essays by cultural anthropologist Esther Newton can be considered an intellectual autobiography. . . . Always thought provoking and interesting, Newton never descends into the dryness of academic writing like many others, which makes it accessible to everyone.”

-- Lambda Book Report

“A welcome collection of Esther Newton’s research and personal essays . . . . This volume is both provocative and accessible enough to be used successfully in undergraduate courses on field methods, women’s movements, and gay and lesbian studies. It may also be a stimulating resource in a graduate course on professional socialization in anthropology or sociology. This book can serve as a compelling example of the epistemological complexities of feminist memoir projects. . . . Overall this book will be of benefit to anyone who is interested in queer and/or feminist ethnography . . . .”

-- Jane Ward Gender & Society

“This collection—an intellectual genealogy of Newton’s work from the last 30 years—reveals the prescience and durability of her earliest writings. . . . Her newer pieces prove just as stimulating and vital.”

-- Publishers Weekly


Publicly Available Download PDF
i

Publicly Available Download PDF
vii

Judith Halberstam
Publicly Available Download PDF
ix

William L. Leap
Publicly Available Download PDF
xix

Publicly Available Download PDF
xxiii

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
1
PART I : DRAG AND CAMP

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
11

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
14

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
30

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
34

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
63
PART II : LESBIAN-FEMINISM

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
93

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
103

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
113

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
142

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
155
PART III : BUTCH

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
167

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
176

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
189

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
195
PART IV: QUEER ANTHROPOLOGY

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
215

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
219

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
225

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
229

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
238

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
243

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
259

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
293

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
311

Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
November 22, 2000
eBook ISBN:
9780822381341
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
360
Other:
23 photographs
Downloaded on 28.10.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9780822381341/html
Scroll to top button