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Full Product Details

Author:   Tony E Adams
Publisher:   Left Coast Press Inc
Imprint:   Left Coast Press Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.80cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.476kg
ISBN:  

9781598746198

ISBN 10:   1598746197
Pages:   215
Publication Date:   28 February 2011
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Reviews

"""...Interweaving his own story with interviews, life stories, and media and textual analysis, Tony Adams' Narrating the Closet complicates, theorizes, and enriches our understanding of the closet and the coming out process. Adams explains in a fresh and original way the complexities and potential dangers of coming out, along with the iterative and interactional nature of that process. This book both theorizes the closet and makes that theory real, explicating how the many moments of coming out function in the lives of lesbians and gay men. This is a thought-provoking and highly readable book.""...- Jacqueline Taylor, Dean, College of Communication, DePaul University ""Grounded in storytelling, Narrating the Closet convincingly models personal vulnerability and academic integrity. Adam's narrative style has a poetic rhythm and cadence, inviting the reader to trust him as a narrator. While scholarly in nature, Narrating the Closet is accessible to a variety of academic and non-academic audiences. Scholars interested in gender and sexuality studies, queer studies, communication studies, and qualitative research will find Narrating the Closet a beneficial edition to their collection. Adam's book extends the boundaries of qualitative research and encourages scholars to utilize their lived experiences as a site for critical inquiry. Narrating the Closet also provides advocates with insightful stories and information that can be used to tackle bullying, harassment, and LGBQ suicides. Narrating the Closet is an affirmation of LGBQ identities that reminds young gay, lesbian, bisexual, and queer individuals that they are not alone.""--Stephanie L. Young, Sexuality & Culture ""Narrating the Closet is linked to a body of queer and post-queer work which deals with same-sex desire and identity after queer theory. It is a work that begins to deconstruct and critically reflects on the legacy of same-sex desire and culture as well as moving towards another paradigm shift' whereby the shibboleths of coming out of the closet, gay pride and gay consumer culture and capital are as problematic as they are empowering. Adams' contribution to this field is both relevant and original, offering a multifaceted alternative to some of the facile and supercilious examinations of same-sex desire, identity politics and representation. The ways in which he examines the relational and contingent construction of the closet means that his work can be read as an autobiographical account used as a methodological resource or read as a critical text in the fields of psychology, sexuality and identity politics."" --Psychology & Sexuality ""Adams' thick description of the contours of coming out, the closet, and same-sex attraction demonstrate the dynamic complexity of non-heterosexual experience, agency, and meaning-making found within the simplest forms of social interaction. In fact, it is not a stretch to say that researchers could draw upon each of the phases outlined in this work--Learning the Closet, Living (in) the Closet, Leaving the Closet, and Paradoxes of the Closet--to further expand knowledge of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer (LGBQ) experience. Similarly, teachers could translate the thick descriptions offered in this work into teaching tools capable of illustrating the importance of taking responsibility--regardless of our own sexual desires--for the establishment of safe spaces wherein people may freely express who, how, and what they love without fear. I would thus suggest that Narrating the Closet represents a significant contribution to our understanding of same-sex desire, the closet, and coming out.""--J Edward Sumerau, Symbolic Interaction"

<p> Seldom do words like 'beautiful, ' 'wrenching, ' and 'loving' appear in the same sentence with 'significant contribution to the literature.' But Tony Adams delivers all of the above in Narrating the Closet. Adams challenges conventional ways of thinking and talking about same-sex attraction. The reader comes to experience the closet as both an existential and a relational space and coming out less as a personal event than as an ongoing emotional, communicative, and political navigation. Framed by the haunting story of a life cut short, Narrating the Closet offers equal measures of wisdom and vulnerability. A must-read for theorists of communication, relationships, and gay male identity and for those of us aspiring to be compassionate and committed allies to LGBTQ persons and communities. - Lisa Tillmann, Professor, Rollins College, Author of Between Gay and Straight: Understanding Friendship Across Sexual Orientation

Narrating the Closet would likely appeal to any person interested in issues surrounding lesbian, gay and bisexual identity. This interest is not limited to the academic community, which I believe is one of the strongest features of this work. Though the book does read with an academic tone, the personal narratives and the simple descriptions of the metaphor of the closet make it a work that would be a worthwhile read for any same-sex attracted person, their friends, their family, their allies, and, in fact, their adversaries who are in need of education.... In short, the book fills a tremendous gap in the literature and is cross-disciplined enough in nature that it may be a handy resource for any classroom of the social sciences, liberal arts or humanities. --Joshua C. Collins, New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development

<p> Adams (communication, Northeastern Illinois Univ.)--a gay man who suffered the death of a former lover, possibly a suicide--combines personal memoir with a description of his research interviewing lesbian and gay people and doing content analysis of television shows and movies. After discussing the importance of the subject matter, the author writes about decisions to enter the closet (to oneself and to others), to stay in it, and possibly to leave it--including the paradoxes of these behaviors for the lesbian or gay individual and others with whom she or he interacts. Finally, he offers advice to people who have same-sex attractions--and those who interact with them--with an eye to making being in or leaving the closet more tenable. He concludes that tolerance between groups can result from mutual understanding of the various problems involved. In the appendix, he describes the methods of his research, giving both the positive and negative aspects of it. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. <br>--R. W. Smith, CHOICE Magazine

Author Information

Tony E. Adams (Ph.D., University of South Florida) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication, Media and Theatre at Northeastern Illinois University. He studies and teaches about interpersonal and family communication, qualitative research, communication theory, and sex, gender, and sexuality. He has published in journals such as Qualitative Inquiry, Soundings, Cultural Studies ? Critical Methodologies, Symbolic Interaction, Communication Teacher, and The Review of Communication, and books such as The Handbook of Critical and Interpretive Methodologies (Sage) and Qualitative Inquiry and Human Rights (Left Coast Press).

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