Arlene Stein | |
---|---|
Occupation | Author, sociologist, professor |
Awards | Ruth Benedict Prize |
Academic background | |
Education | |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Sociology |
Institutions | Rutgers University University of Essex University of Oregon |
Notable works | The Stranger Next Door Sex and Sensibility |
Arlene Stein is an American sociologist and author best known for her writing about sex and gender,the politics of identities,and collective memory. She is Distinguished Professor of sociology at Rutgers University where she directs the Rutgers University Institute for Research on Women. [1] Stein has also taught at the University of Essex and at the University of Oregon.
Stein grew up in New York City and graduated from the Bronx High School of Science. She attended Amherst College from which she received her BA in History in 1980. She studied at University of California,Berkeley where she obtained an MA in 1985 and a PhD in sociology in 1993. Stein identifies as a lesbian. [2] She is the daughter of Holocaust survivors from Poland. [3]
Stein's work explores intersections among personal and political change,particularly how marginalized and traumatized people narrate experiences. Stein draws on feminist theory,symbolic interactionism,psychoanalytic theory,and queer theory. She employs interviewing and ethnographic research methods. Her 1997 Sex and Sensibility [4] traces accounts by women engaged in feminist and gay/lesbian movements noting challenges to the culturally dominant medical definitions of lesbianism. Stein's 2018 Unbound [5] explores new varieties of masculinity that challenge feminist notions of gender. The Stranger Next Door [6] focuses on a town in the United States Pacific Northwest that passed a ballot initiative designed to outlaw gay/lesbian rights. Stein establishes that opposition to LGBT rights in the United States became a way to constitute Christian fundamentalism,and illustrates ways that conservative social movements construct knowledge and shape public opinion about sexuality. Reluctant Witnesses [7] examines the rise of Holocaust consciousness in the United States. It draws on interviews and participant observation with Holocaust survivors and their children to describe how the Holocaust became widely discussed and understood.
Stein received the American Anthropological Association's Ruth Benedict Prize in 2001 for her second monograph,The Stranger Next Door:The Story of a Small Community’s Battle over Sex,Faith,and Civil Rights. In 2006,Stein received the American Sociological Association Simon and Gagnon Lifetime Achievement Award for her career contribution to the study of sexualities. [8]
Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a radical reordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts, while recognizing that women's experiences are also affected by other social divisions such as in race, class, and sexual orientation. The ideology and movement emerged in the 1960s.
Under the rule of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, gay men and lesbians were persecuted with thousands of gay men imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps.
"New Queer Cinema" is a term first coined by the academic B. Ruby Rich in Sight & Sound magazine in 1992 to define and describe a movement in queer-themed independent filmmaking in the early 1990s.
Lesbian feminism is a cultural movement and critical perspective that encourages women to focus their efforts, attentions, relationships, and activities towards their fellow women rather than men, and often advocates lesbianism as the logical result of feminism. Lesbian feminism was most influential in the 1970s and early 1980s, primarily in North America and Western Europe, and arose out of dissatisfaction with the New Left and the Campaign for Homosexual Equality.
Dorothy Edith Smith is a Canadian sociologist with research interests in a variety of disciplines, including women's studies, feminist theory, psychology, and educational studies, as well as in certain subfields of sociology, such as the sociology of knowledge, family studies, and methodology. Smith founded the sociological sub-disciplines of feminist standpoint theory and institutional ethnography.
Feminist sociology is a conflict theory and theoretical perspective which observes gender in its relation to power, both at the level of face-to-face interaction and reflexivity within a social structure at large. Focuses include sexual orientation, race, economic status, and nationality.
Patricia Hill Collins is an American academic specializing in race, class, and gender. She is a Distinguished University Professor of Sociology Emerita at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is also the former head of the Department of African-American Studies at the University of Cincinnati, and a past President of the American Sociological Association. Collins was the 100th president of the ASA and the first African-American woman to hold this position.
Gayle S. Rubin is an American cultural anthropologist best known as an activist and theorist of sex and gender politics. She has written on a range of subjects including feminism, sadomasochism, prostitution, pedophilia, pornography and lesbian literature, as well as anthropological studies and histories of sexual subcultures, especially focused in urban contexts. Her 1984 essay "Thinking Sex" is widely regarded as a founding text of gay and lesbian studies, sexuality studies, and queer theory. She is an associate professor of anthropology and women's studies at the University of Michigan.
The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party is a 1995 pseudohistorical book by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams. Drawing on Samuel Igra's 1945 book Germany's National Vice, Lively and Abrams argue that the crimes committed by homosexuals in the Nazi Party exceed the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany and that homosexuality contributed to the extreme militarism of Nazi Germany. They also contend that only feminine homosexuals were persecuted by the Nazis, while "butch" homosexuals formed the leadership cadre of the Nazi party. Historian Andrew Wackerfuss criticized the book for lack of accuracy and "outright homophobic charges". Sociologist Arlene Stein considers the book part of right-wing Christian advocacy that includes half-truths and falsehoods.
Sheila Jeffreys is a former professor of political science at the University of Melbourne. An English expatriate and lesbian feminist scholar, she analyses the history and politics of human sexuality.
The feminist sex wars, also known as the lesbian sex wars, or simply the sex wars or porn wars, are terms used to refer to collective debates amongst feminists regarding a number of issues broadly relating to sexuality and sexual activity. Differences of opinion on matters of sexuality deeply polarized the feminist movement, particularly leading feminist thinkers, in the late 1970s and early 1980s and continue to influence debate amongst feminists to this day.
Feminist sexology is an offshoot of traditional studies of sexology that focuses on the intersectionality of sex and gender in relation to the sexual lives of women. Sexology has a basis in psychoanalysis, specifically Freudian theory, which played a big role in early sexology. This reactionary field of feminist sexology seeks to be inclusive of experiences of sexuality and break down the problematic ideas that have been expressed by sexology in the past. Feminist sexology shares many principles with the overarching field of sexology; in particular, it does not try to prescribe a certain path or "normality" for women's sexuality, but only observe and note the different and varied ways in which women express their sexuality. It is a young field, but one that is growing rapidly.
Amber L. Hollibaugh is an American writer, filmmaker and political activist, largely concerned with feminist and sexual agendas.
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Rosalind Clair Gill is a British sociologist and feminist cultural theorist. She is currently Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at City, University of London. Gill is author or editor of ten books, and numerous articles and chapters, and her work has been translated into Chinese, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish.
Radhika Chandiramani is the founder of TARSHI, a New Delhi-based NGO that works on issues of sexual and reproductive health and rights. She is a clinical psychologist, writer and editor. Her published works on sexuality and human rights have been covered in media and scholarly reviews. Chandiramani received the MacArthur Fellowship in the year 1995 for leadership development. She is also the recipient of the 2003 Soros Reproductive Health and Rights Fellowship from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
Mary Susan McIntosh was a British sociologist, feminist, political activist and campaigner for lesbian and gay rights in the UK.
A New Americans Club is a type of benefit society established by Holocaust survivors in the United States. These postwar establishments were largely created by refugees settling in newer Jewish communities, unlike in older urban centers like New York City where survivors largely joined a previous generation's landsmanshaftn.
Verta Ann Taylor is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with focuses on gender, sexuality, social movements, and women's health.
Gay fascism is a conspiracy theory alleging that homosexuals were numerous and prominent as a group in the Nazi Party or the identification of Nazism with homosexuality more generally. It has been promoted by various individuals and groups both before and after World War II, especially by left-wing Germans during the Nazi era and the Christian right in the United States more recently. Historians regard the conspiracy theory as having no merit.