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Articles 1 - 14 of 14

Full-Text Articles in American Studies

Review Of Amber Jamilla Musser's Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, And Masochism, Margot Weiss Dec 2014

Review Of Amber Jamilla Musser's Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, And Masochism, Margot Weiss

Margot Weiss

No abstract provided.


Interview With Margot Weiss In Critical Lede Podcast, Margot Weiss Oct 2013

Interview With Margot Weiss In Critical Lede Podcast, Margot Weiss

Margot Weiss

Podcast: Episode 130 - Interview with Margot Weiss We talk with Margot Weiss (Wesleyan) about BDSM, pleasure and neoliberalism in her new book Techniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality.


“Margot Weiss Talks Bdsm And Sexuality.” Interview By Yasmin Nair In Windy City Times., Margot Weiss Sep 2013

“Margot Weiss Talks Bdsm And Sexuality.” Interview By Yasmin Nair In Windy City Times., Margot Weiss

Margot Weiss

Margot Weiss' book, Techniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality ( Duke University Press, 2011 ) has become a fixture in several ongoing conversations about the BDSM community. It received the 2012 Ruth Benedict Book Prize and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards.


“On Marriage Equality” (Review Of Jay Cee Whitehead's The Nuptial Deal: Same-Sex Marriage And Neo-Liberal Governance [University Of Chicago Press, 2011]), Margot Weiss Dec 2012

“On Marriage Equality” (Review Of Jay Cee Whitehead's The Nuptial Deal: Same-Sex Marriage And Neo-Liberal Governance [University Of Chicago Press, 2011]), Margot Weiss

Margot Weiss

Jaye Cee Whitehead’s book The Nuptial Deal is a sociological study of a marriage equality organization (given the pseudonym Marriage Rights Now, or MRN) in the western United States


’Reinvigorating The Queer Political Imagination’: A Roundtable With Ryan Conrad, Yasmin Nair, And Karma Chávez Of Against Equality, Margot Weiss Nov 2012

’Reinvigorating The Queer Political Imagination’: A Roundtable With Ryan Conrad, Yasmin Nair, And Karma Chávez Of Against Equality, Margot Weiss

Margot Weiss

Margot Weiss talked with Ryan Conrad, Yasmin Nair, and Karma Chávez, three members of Against Equality, a queer online archive, publishing, and arts collective that challenges the political vision of mainstream gay and lesbian politics—especially inclusion in marriage, the U.S. military, and the prison industrial complex via hate crimes legislation. They have three anthologies: Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage, Against Equality: Don’t Ask to Fight Their Wars, and Against Equality: Prisons Will Not Protect You.


Introduction: Left Intellectuals And The Neoliberal University, Margot Weiss, Naomi Greyser Nov 2012

Introduction: Left Intellectuals And The Neoliberal University, Margot Weiss, Naomi Greyser

Margot Weiss

This American Quarterly forum builds on a symposium held in 2011 at Wesleyan University on the relationship between academia and activsm. Our symposium was inspired by a pair of concerns: that academics too often either romanticize activism as the site where “real” political work happens or else ascribe an abstracted radical politics to quotidian academic work.


Intellectual Inquiry Otherwise: An Interview With Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Margot Weiss Nov 2012

Intellectual Inquiry Otherwise: An Interview With Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Margot Weiss

Margot Weiss

Margot Weiss talked to Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore about the academic appropriation of activist intellectual labor and the hierarchies of intellectual work inside and outside the university. Sycamore is a writer, editor of several books including That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (Soft Skull, 2004, 2008), Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (Seal, 2007), and Why Are Faggots so Afraid of Faggots? Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform (AK Press, 2012), queer activist, artist, filmmaker, and critic.


“Bdsm And Feminism: Notes On An Impasse”, Margot Weiss May 2012

“Bdsm And Feminism: Notes On An Impasse”, Margot Weiss

Margot Weiss

Blog post that reflects on the current impasse in the debate between sex-positive and sex-negative, or pro-BDSM and anti-BDSM, feminism. This debate is due for an overhaul--I hope that recasting it might clear a path toward a more productive discussion about the feminist politics of desire.


The Epistemology Of Ethnography: Method In Queer Anthropology, Margot D. Weiss Dec 2010

The Epistemology Of Ethnography: Method In Queer Anthropology, Margot D. Weiss

Margot Weiss

This essay explores methodological dilemmas in queer anthropology by reviewing three recent queer ethnographies: Mary Gray's Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America; Mark Padilla's Caribbean Pleasure Industry: Tourism, Sexuality, and AIDS in the Dominican Republic; and Gloria Wekker's The Politics of Passion: Women's Sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora. The essay aims to illuminate the epistemology of queer studies more broadly by focusing on a key paradox of ethnographic method: the binary of theory and data that is simultaneously made and unmade in ethnographic research and writing. In a newly transnational queer studies, ethnography …


Techniques Of Pleasure: Bdsm And The Circuits Of Sexuality, Margot Weiss Dec 2010

Techniques Of Pleasure: Bdsm And The Circuits Of Sexuality, Margot Weiss

Margot Weiss

Techniques of Pleasure is a vivid portrayal of the San Francisco Bay Area’s pansexual BDSM (SM) community. Margot Weiss conducted ethnographic research at dungeon play parties and at workshops on bondage, role play, and flogging, and she interviewed more than sixty SM practitioners. She describes a scene devoted to a form of erotic play organized around technique, rules and regulations, consumerism, and self-mastery. Challenging the notion that SM is inherently transgressive, Weiss links the development of commodity-oriented sexual communities and the expanding market for sex toys to the eroticization of gendered, racialized, and national inequalities. She analyzes the politics of …


Bondage And Barbeques, Margot D. Weiss Dec 2010

Bondage And Barbeques, Margot D. Weiss

Margot Weiss

Interview in Method Magazine


Neoliberalism At Play: An Interview With Margot D. Weiss, Margot Weiss Sep 2010

Neoliberalism At Play: An Interview With Margot D. Weiss, Margot Weiss

Margot Weiss

Interview at Trikster: Nordic Queer Journal Blog


Kink On Tap: Sexuality Netcast, Margot Weiss Mar 2010

Kink On Tap: Sexuality Netcast, Margot Weiss

Margot Weiss

No abstract provided.


Gay Shame And Bdsm Pride: Neoliberalism, Privacy, And Sexual Politics, Margot D. Weiss Dec 2007

Gay Shame And Bdsm Pride: Neoliberalism, Privacy, And Sexual Politics, Margot D. Weiss

Margot Weiss

This essay contrasts two contemporary activist groups: Gay Shame San Francisco, which seeks to disrupt homonormative lesbian and gay activism by challenging policing and gentrification; and the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, which disseminates a public image of BDSM, leather, and kinky practitioners as suburban minivan drivers who “look and dress like your neighbors.” Margot Weiss argues that neoliberalism’s relegation of sexuality into the realm of the private renders even kinky sexual practices like BDSM normative—kink-normative, if not homonormative—by detaching potentially disruptive sexual practices from any form of radical or progressive—public—politics.