Grace Lavery

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Grace Elisabeth Lavery is an associate professor of English critical theory and gender and women's studies at UC Berkeley, whose research focuses on the history of language and aestheticism in 19th century Victorian English society, along with topics involving the language and literature of sexuality and gender.

Contents

Education

Lavery graduated under advisor Paul Saint-Amour with an English Ph.D. in 2013, with a thesis titled "Empire in a Glass Case: Japanese Beauty, British Culture, and Transnational Aestheticism". [1]

Career

As a first publication, Lavery released Quaint, Exquisite in 2019 on a subject connected to her post-doctoral research: Victorian era sensibilities in relation to Japan as viewed through a queer theory lens. One major focus of the book is on the idea of orientalism and how that colored English understanding of Japan as the "Other Empire". [2] A 2022 memoir titled Please Miss was her second published book and covered a wide range of topics beyond her own life and background. An introspection on being trans through a wide variety of genres and non-sequitur asides, the book psychoanalyzes the trans experience and aspects of life that represent it. [3]

Lavery's third book, Pleasure and Efficacy, was released in 2023 and discussed the meaning of being transgender and how transitioning works in relation to how the topic is discussed in various genres of literature. The book also includes philosophical views of writers from the 19th century and how understanding of "transness" is complicated and nuanced, unlike how it can commonly be portrayed in current times. [4] Pleasure and Efficacy was announced as a finalist for the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. [5] In 2024, Closures, her fourth book, was published on the topic of the American sitcom and its usage of heterosexuality to define the nuclear family and cause conflict and issues that reinforce the scenario. Lavery explains how the storylines in sitcoms use "external agents" to create strife that ultimately promotes the heteronormativity seen in the nuclear family value system. [6]

She received a $125,000 advance from Substack to publish a newsletter on their platform. [7]

Personal life

In 2018, Lavery officially began transitioning and noted in later interviews that she was happy to have done so before the publication of her first book and her bid for tenure, as it allowed her to enter the academic space with her chosen name. [8] [9]

Lavery married Daniel M. Lavery in 2019 and they moved from California to New York. In 2020, they formed a throuple with Lily Woodruff and they had a son in 2024. [10]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and the nature of taste and, in a broad sense, incorporates the philosophy of art. Aesthetics examines the philosophy of aesthetic value, which is determined by critical judgments of artistic taste; thus, the function of aesthetics is the "critical reflection on art, culture and nature".

Beauty is commonly described as a feature of objects that makes them pleasurable to perceive. Such objects include landscapes, sunsets, humans and works of art. Beauty, art and taste are the main subjects of aesthetics, one of the fields of study within philosophy. As a positive aesthetic value, it is contrasted with ugliness as its negative counterpart.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dandy</span> Historically, a man who emphasised good looks, refined language, and leisurely hobbies

A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance and personal grooming, refined language and leisurely hobbies. A dandy could be a self-made man both in person and persona, who emulated the aristocratic style of life regardless of his middle-class origin, birth, and background, especially during the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Britain.

Feminist film theory is a theoretical film criticism derived from feminist politics and feminist theory influenced by second-wave feminism and brought about around the 1970s in the United States. With the advancements in film throughout the years feminist film theory has developed and changed to analyse the current ways of film and also go back to analyse films past. Feminists have many approaches to cinema analysis, regarding the film elements analyzed and their theoretical underpinnings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heterosexuality</span> Attraction between people of the opposite sex or gender

Heterosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction or sexual behavior between people of the opposite sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, heterosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to people of the opposite sex. It "also refers to a person's sense of identity based on those attractions, related behaviors, and membership in a community of others who share those attractions." Someone who is heterosexual is commonly referred to as straight.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Winnifred Eaton (writer)</span> Canadian author and screenwriter

Winnifred Eaton was a Canadian author and screenwriter of Chinese-British ancestry. Publishing prolifically under a number of names, most predominantly, the pseudonym Onoto Watanna, she was one of the first North American writers of Asian descent to publish fiction in English.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Spencer Ashbee</span> Book collector and writer (1834–1900)

Henry Spencer Ashbee was a book collector, writer and bibliographer. He is notable for his massive, clandestine three-volume bibliography of erotic literature published under the pseudonym of Pisanus Fraxi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bisexual erasure</span> Dismissing or misrepresenting bisexuals in the public perception

Bisexual erasure, also called bisexual invisibility, is the tendency to ignore, remove, falsify, or re-explain evidence of bisexuality in history, academia, the news media, and other primary sources.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pegging (sexual practice)</span> Use of a strap-on dildo to penetrate another persons anus

Pegging is an anal sex act in which a woman penetrates a man's anus with a strap-on dildo.

Queer heterosexuality is heterosexual practice or identity that is also controversially called queer. "Queer heterosexuality" is argued to consist of heterosexual, cisgender, and allosexual persons who show nontraditional gender expressions, or who adopt gender roles that differ from the hegemonic masculinity and femininity of their particular culture.

<i>The Englishwomans Domestic Magazine</i> Defunct British magazine

The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine (EDM) was a monthly magazine which was published between 1852 and 1879. Initially, the periodical was jointly edited by Isabella Mary Beeton and her husband Samuel Orchart Beeton, with Isabella contributing to sections on domestic management, fashion, embroidery and even translations of French novels. Some of her contributions were later collected to form her widely acclaimed Book of Household Management. The editors sought to inform as well as entertain their readers; providing the advice of an 'encouraging friend' and 'cultivation of the mind' alongside serialised fiction, short stories and poetry. More unusually, it also featured patterns for dressmaking.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel M. Lavery</span> American humorist and advice columnist

Daniel M. Lavery is an American author and editor. He is known for having co-founded the website The Toast, and written the books Texts from Jane Eyre (2014), The Merry Spinster (2018), Something That May Shock and Discredit You (2020), and Women's Hotel (2024). Lavery wrote Slate's "Dear Prudence" advice column from 2016 to 2021. From 2022 to 2023, he hosted a podcast on Slate titled Big Mood, Little Mood. In 2017, Lavery started a paid e-mail newsletter on Substack titled Shatner Chatner, renamed to The Chatner in 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Male gaze</span> Concept in feminist theory

In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world in the visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer. The concept was first articulated by British feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey in her 1975 essay, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Mulvey's theory draws on historical precedents, such as the depiction of women in European oil paintings from the Renaissance period, where the female form was often idealized and presented from a voyeuristic male perspective. Art historian John Berger, in his work Ways of Seeing (1972), highlighted how traditional Western art positioned women as subjects of male viewers’ gazes, reinforcing a patriarchal visual narrative.

<i>The Rose of Versailles</i> Japanese manga series by Riyoko Ikeda

The Rose of Versailles, also known as Lady Oscar and La Rose de Versailles, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Riyoko Ikeda. It was originally serialized in the manga magazine Margaret from 1972 to 1973, while a revival of the series was published in the magazine from 2013 to 2018. The series is a historical drama set in the years preceding and during the French Revolution. Using a combination of historical personages and original characters, The Rose of Versailles focuses primarily on the lives of two women: the Queen of France Marie Antoinette, and Oscar François de Jarjayes, who serves as commander of the Royal Guard.

Jennifer Tucker is Professor of Technology, Law, and Visual Culture in the Department of History at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where she is the founding director of the Center for the Study of Guns and Society. At Wesleyan, she teaches courses on British and American technology, culture, photography, the role of evidence, and aesthetics of justice and historical storytelling.

In anime and manga, the term "LGBTQ themes" includes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender material. Outside Japan, anime generally refers to a specific Japanese-style of animation, but the word anime is used by the Japanese themselves to broadly describe all forms of animated media there. According to Harry Benshoff and Sean Griffin, the fluid state of animation allows the flexibility of animated characters to perform multiple roles at once. Manga genres that focus on same-sex intimacy and relationships resulted from fan work that depicted relationships between two same-sex characters. This includes characters who express their gender and sexuality outside of hetero-normative boundaries. There are also multiple sub genres that target specific consumers and themes: yaoi, yuri, shoujo-ai, shonen-ai, bara, etc. LGBT-related manga found its origins from fans who created an "alternative universe" in which they paired their favorite characters together. Many of the earliest works that contained LGBT themes were found in works by dōjinshi, specifically written content outside the regular industry. The rise of yaoi and yuri was also slowed due to censorship laws in Japan that make it extremely hard for Japanese manga artists ("mangakas") and others to create work that is LGBT themed. Anime that contained LGBTQ content was changed to meet international standards. However, publishing companies continued to expand their repertoire to include yuri and yaoi, and conventions were created to form a community and culture for fans of this work.

Lynda Nead is a British curator and art historian. She is currently the Pevsner Chair of the History of Art at Birkbeck, University of London. Nead's work studies British art, media, culture and often focuses on gender. Nead is a fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society and of the Academia Europaea.

Caroline Levine is an American literary critic. She is the David and Kathleen Ryan Professor of Humanities at Cornell University. Her published works are in the fields of Victorian literature, literary theory, literary criticism, formalism, television, and climate change.

An Internet aesthetic, also simply referred to as an aesthetic or microaesthetic, is a visual art style, sometimes accompanied by a fashion style, subculture, or music genre, that usually originates from the Internet or is popularized on it. Throughout the 2010s and 2020s, online aesthetics gained increasing popularity, specifically on social media platforms such as Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, and TikTok, and often were used by people to express their individuality and creativity. They can also be used to create a sense of community and belonging among people who share the same interests. The term aesthetic has been described as being "totally divorced from its academic origins", and is commonly used as an adjective.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deborah Lutz</span> American Victorianist

Deborah Lutz is an American academic and writer. She is currently the Thruston B. Morton Endowed Chair at the University of Louisville. Her scholarship focuses on Victorian literature, material culture, the history of sexuality, gender and LGBTQ+ studies, and the history of the book. Lutz has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Mellon Foundation at the Huntington Library, and the New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. She is also a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities.

References

  1. "Grace Lavery". english.upenn.edu. University of Pennsylvania. 2024. Retrieved July 3, 2024.
  2. Friedman, Dustin (Summer 2020). "Lavery, Grace. Quaint, Exquisite: Victorian Aesthetics and the Idea of Japan". Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies . 16 (2). Retrieved July 3, 2024.
  3. 1 2 Wark, McKenzie (February 2022). "Cocky as Hell". Liber . Vol. 1, no. 1. Archived from the original on January 18, 2023. Retrieved January 17, 2023.
  4. Plagmann, Saeri (June 1, 2023). "The Pen Ten: An Interview With Grace E. Lavery". PEN America . Retrieved July 3, 2024.
  5. Stewart, Sophia (January 25, 2024). "2024 National Book Critics Circle Awards Finalists Announced". Publishers Weekly . Retrieved July 6, 2024.
  6. Watson-Fore, McKenzie (June 3, 2024). "Closures: Heterosexuality and the American Sitcom – Grace Lavery". Full Stop. Retrieved July 3, 2024.
  7. Smith, Ben (April 11, 2021). "Why We're Freaking Out About Substack". The New York Times . Retrieved July 3, 2024.
  8. Pettit, Emma (January 20, 2019). "The Anxiety of 'Doing Womanhood Correctly' in Academe". The Chronicle of Higher Education . Retrieved July 4, 2024.
  9. Clifton, Mallen (February 9, 2022). "An Exchange of Letters: Interview with Grace Lavery, author of Please Miss". Berkeley Fiction Review . Archived from the original on November 27, 2022. Retrieved July 4, 2024.
  10. Sicha, Choire (April 10, 2024). "Keeping Up With the Laverys". The Cut . Retrieved July 3, 2024.
  11. Reviews for Closures:
  12. Clare, Stephanie D. (April 2024). "Grace E Lavery. Pleasure and Efficacy: Of Pen Names, Cover Versions and Other Trans Techniques". The Review of English Studies . 75 (319): 245–247. doi:10.1093/res/hgad122 . Retrieved July 6, 2024.
  13. Reviews for Quaint, Exquisite: