Available Formats
Critical Sexuality Studies, Lavender Languages, and Everyday Life
By (Author) Michelle Marzullo
Edited by William L. Leap
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Bloomsbury Academic
30th April 2026
United Kingdom
Professional and Scholarly
Non Fiction
Language and Linguistics
Sociolinguistics
Gender studies, gender groups
Semantics, discourse analysis, stylistics
306.76
Paperback
256
Width 156mm, Height 234mm
Critical Sexuality Studies (CSS) and Lavender Languages/Linguistics (LLL) are leading modes of inquiry in two different fields of sexuality studies. In this edited collection, chapters reveal how these can be combined to produce a new approach to analyzing language use, sexuality and gender, and discourse on authority and power.
The book demonstrates how together LLL and CSS iterate each other through their mutual concern with sexuality, gender, and power, especially when considering the materiality of daily life. Authors then compare CSS to other fields of sexuality studies to reveal commonalities and tensions that are addressed via the LLL-based interventions exemplified in this volume. The body of the book organizes examples of Lavender Languages projects around a four-part CSS framework, with an introductory essay for each section indicating the connections between the CSS theme and the LLL examples. The volume concludes with reflections showing how CSS interests in sexuality and power benefits from LLL with its emphasis on socially focused studies of discourse and text.
Strengthening pathways to future knowledge-making, this book provides a detailed roadmap for scholarly and activist engagements in language-centered critical sexuality studies.
A triumphant volume that will leave you pondering new questions, reconsidering the political fabric of our language, and feeling immensely hopeful for the future of queer and sexuality scholarship. If this is the future of critical sexuality studies, count me in! -- Breanne Fahs, Arizona State University, USA
Michelle Marzullo is Chair and Professor in the Human Sexuality Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies, USA.
William L. Leap is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at American University, USA.