Sexualities & Communication in Everyday Life: A Reader

"There are more than twenty-five contributors to the Reader. The sheer pleasure that the contributors provide in the way they bring together brilliantly diverse perspectives to enlarge the limits of one′s understanding is not easy to describe. Particularly stimulating among the collection are the pieces by Jeffrey Weeks and Patrick Johnson. The intellectual satisfaction derived from the study of the erotic self and the human struggle and search for meaning and means of communicating meaning is quare indeed A book to read and return from time to time."

―The Book Review


"This groundbreaking reader will spark the development of new courses in communication and sexuality.  Students and teachers wanting to fully understand the constitutive and performative nature of communication will find few other books that meet their needs better than this one."
 ―R. Jeffrey Ringer, St. Cloud University  

"Sexualities and Communication in Everyday Life provides readers with a useful typology for comprehending the various shifts in thinking about sexual identities and communication that have occurred across time while it also provides a deft synthesis of the major issues and themes.  The text puts an excellent breadth of essays--some newly acquired for this book, some previously published and germinal―easily into students′ and teachers′ hands."
―Lesa Lockford, Bowling Green State University  

Sexualities and Communication in Everyday Life: A Reader is a groundbreaking anthology on the role of communication in the construction and performance of sexualities in interpersonal contexts and in public discourses. Editors Karen E. Lovaas and Mercilee M. Jenkins bring together an interdisciplinary collection which include excerpts from foundational works, recent journal articles, and original pieces written specifically for this text.  

Key Features:

•  This collection (1) assists students in understanding the intersections of sexuality with other identity constructions; (2) introduces the concepts and implications of queer theory; (3) challenges students to move beyond stereotypical, dichotomous views of homosexual and heterosexual identities and communication styles; and, (4) facilitates students′ awareness of and ability to recognize heteronormativity.
• While most of the readings are written by communication researchers, there are many by scholars from various disciplines including sociology, English, psychology, gender studies, and anthropology. These works also exemplify a variety of research methods, with an emphasis on qualitative research including critical, ethnographic, and performance.
• An introductory chapter providing a thorough review of literature to date on communication and sexualities is followed by sections on interpersonal contexts and public discourses. There is a logical flow from the foundational materials, to the examinations of sexuality in one′s everyday vocabulary, interactions, and relationships, to wider social discourses, to interventions, praxis, and future visions. In addition, discussion questions follow each reading to spark personal reflection and application.

Karen Lovaas (Ph.D. in American Studies, University of Hawaii) is Assistant Professor of Speech and Communication Studies at San Francisco State University. Recent publications underscore her interest in sexualities, gender, communication, and pedagogy. The contested terrain of LGBT studies and queer theory, with John Elia and Gust Yep, is in press; it is a follow-up volume to Queer theory and communication: From disciplining queers to queering the discipline(s) (Harrington Park Press, 2003). She authored encyclopedia entries on “gender roles” and “sexism” for The international encyclopedia of [homo] sexualities, education, and cultures (2005), and glossary entries on “cross-dressing,” “free love,” “liberation,” and “sexual assault” for Sexuality: The essential glossary (2004). “A critical appraisal of assimilationist and radical ideologies underlying same-sex marriage in LGBT communities in the United States” (2003), with Yep and Elia, and “Sexual practices, identification, and the paradoxes of identity in the era of AIDS: The case of ‘riding bareback’” (2002), Yep and Alex Pagonis, were published in Journal of Homosexuality. With former undergraduate students Lina Baroudi and S. Collins, Lovaas wrote “Transcending heteronormativity in the classroom: Using queer and critical pedagogies to alleviate trans-anxieties” for the Journal of Lesbian Studies (2002); it was simultaneously published in Addressing homophobia and heterosexism on college campuses (Haworth Press, 2003). “Communication in ‘Asian American’ families with queer members: A relational dialectics perspective,” with Yep and Philip Ho, appears in Queer families, queer politics: Challenging culture and the state (Columbia University Press, 2001). Her ongoing projects utilize critical, queer, and feminist approaches to communication research and pedagogy.

Mercilee Jenkins (Ph. D in Speech Communication, University of Illinois) is a professor in the Department of Speech & Communication Studies at San Francisco State University. Her publications include her solo performance texts, poetry, and scholarly articles on women’s small group communication, the performance of personal narratives, and communication in the college classroom. She was an Associate Editor for Queer Words, Queer Images edited by R. Jeffrey Ringer. Her ethnographic research on gender, sexuality and relationships has resulted in several produced plays, including A Credit to Her Country, based on the oral histories of lesbian in the U. S. military and She Rises Like a Building to the Sky, about the founding of the San Francisco Women′s Building. She received two Horizon Foundation grants for Credit and a San Francisco Arts Commission Cultural Equity Grant for the development of She Rises.  Her solo performance piece, Menopause and Desire, premiered at the San Francisco Fringe Festival in September 2002 and was published in its entirety in Text and Performance Quarterly in July 2005. Dr. Jenkins received the Leslie Irene Coger Award for Distinguished Performance from the National Communication Association in 2004.