The Ashgate research companion to queer theory /

Those invigorated by the multiple facets and faces of queerness will welcome this handy, heady, interdisciplinary tome. All good theory must produce more questions than answers, and in fact that is how Giffney (Univ. of Limerick, Ireland) opens the introduction to this collection of interrogations covering the past 20 years. Divided into four sections--"Identity," "Discourse," "Normativity," "Relationality"--the 29 essays (which come from both established and emerging scholars) look at intersections between queerness and other schools of thought (including "posthumanism") and help readers "resist being made a slave to the discourses one is operating within at any one moment by peeling back the multitudinous layers of meaning contained within each and every pronouncement." As a colleague of this reviewer explained, one does not just "read theory," one "lives it." Perhaps this volume will help readers live better. It certainly joins ranks with such other works as Bisexuality: A Critical Reader, ed. by Merl Storr (1999); The Transgender Studies Reader, ed. by Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle (2006); and Black Queer Studies, ed. by E. Patrick Johnson and Mae Henderson (CH, May'06, 43-5576). Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. J. Pruitt University of Wisconsin-Rock County