Imperative Queer Studies Texts?

[vondafkossum]

Howdy all! I'm jumping into this cycle after being shut out last cycle, so you may have seen me around last year. I've spent about five years on the fringes of academia (the most fringiest, as I've been teaching high school English). I've tried to stay on top of what's been going on and I've attended MLA a few times, however I feel woefully under-read going into this cycle. My undergrad program was great, but most of the work I did was in early modern lit and hermeneutics. Does anyone have any recommendations for texts I should be reading and/or recent works in queer studies? I'm particularly interested in homosocial relationships within the structure(s) of contemporary lit and media (e.g. 20/21 c), particularly in science fiction and other genre works. 

Thanks in advance!

Edited August 3, 2019 by vondafkossum

[Bopie5]

Not to be too basic, but Judith Butler, Eve Sedgwick, and Jack Halberstam are some pretty standard seminal queer theorists. Lauren Berlant and Gayle Rubin are also big. And obviously a lot of their work engages with Foucault. But you might already be familiar with all those! 

[vondafkossum]

I am fairly familiar with those, but probably not as familiar with Berlant as I could be. Thanks!

[eddyrynes]

Lee Edelman's No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive and José Esteban Muñoz's Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity are two seminal texts in recent(ish) debates in queer studies about the social and the antisocial. Mari Ruti brings these together quite thoughtfully in her recent book The Ethics of Opting Out: Queer Theory's Defiant Subjects. Hope that helps

[vondafkossum]

It does! Thanks so much @eddyrynes!

[agunns]

I definitely want to echo earlier posts here - I'm reapplying to PhD programs this year, and as I'm editing my writing sample, I've been reading Ruti's The Ethics of Opting Out. I've found it incredibly accessible and illuminating. I would also recommend reading Sara Ahmed! Ahmed might not be considered as seminal a queer theorist as Edelman, Halberstam, Berlant, etc., but I still find her work incredible powerful.