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WORK TITLE: A Taste for Brown Bodies
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http://english.vassar.edu/bios/hiperez.html * https://nyupress.org/books/9781479845866/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Educator and writer. Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, associate professor of English.
AWARDS:LGBT Studies Award, Lambda Literary, for A Taste for Brown Bodies, 2016.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Hiram Pérez is associate professor of English at Vassar College, with research and teaching interests in comparative race and ethnicity, queer studies, and popular culture. He teaches in the English Department but also offers courses in Africana studies, Latin American and Latino/a studies and literature, and women’s studies.
In 2015, Pérez published A Taste for Brown Bodies: Gay Modernity and Cosmopolitan Desire, which won the 2016 LGBT Studies Award, given by Lambda Literary. In this book, Pérez examines the evolution of the modern gay male identity, particularly through the iconic figures of the sailor, soldier, and cowboy. In literary and film works dating as far back as the nineteenth century, he draws connections between the gay male identity and U.S. imperialism and colonialism. Writing in Choice, T.E. Adams remarked that Pérez has produced a “provocative study” of the “movement, consumption, and exoticization of primitive, ‘brown’ bodies,” tracing the connections through such diverse subjects as lynching in the South and torture at Abu Ghraib. Adams recommended the book to graduate students and faculty. At his eponymous Web site, Amos Lassen, referring to “the beautiful prose and the convincing arguments” that address the “complex participation of gay modernity within US imperialism,” commented that the book “will engender debate.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, April, 2016, T.E. Adams, review of A Taste for Brown Bodies: Gay Modernity and Cosmopolitan Desire, p. 1155.
ONLINE
Reviews by Amos Lassen, http://reviewsbyamoslassen.com/ (October 6, 2015), Amos Lassen, review of A Taste for Brown Bodies.
Vassar College Web site, http://english.vassar.edu/ (March 21, 2017), author profile.
A Taste for Brown Bodies
Gay Modernity and Cosmopolitan Desire
By Hiram Pérez
192 pages
October, 2015
ISBN: 9781479845866
Table of Contents
Introduction
$26Paper
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Subjects:
American Studies
Gender & Women's Studies
Latina/o Studies
Literary Studies
Part of the Sexual Cultures series
AUTHOR
Hiram Pérez is an Assistant Professor of English at Vassar College.
All books by Hiram Pérez
Winner, LGBT Studies Lammy Award presented by Lambda Literary
Neither queer theory nor queer activism has fully reckoned with the role of race in the emergence of the modern gay subject. In A Taste for Brown Bodies, Hiram Pérez traces the development of gay modernity and its continued romanticization of the brown body. Focusing in particular on three figures with elusive queer histories—the sailor, the soldier, and the cowboy— Pérez unpacks how each has been memorialized and desired for their heroic masculinity while at the same time functioning as agents for the expansion of the US borders and neocolonial zones of influence.
Describing an enduring homonationalism dating to the “birth” of the homosexual in the late 19th century, Pérez considers not only how US imperialist expansion was realized, but also how it was visualized for and through gay men. By means of an analysis of literature, film, and photographs from the 19th to the 21st centuries—including Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Anne Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain,” and photos of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison—Pérez proposes that modern gay male identity, often traced to late Victorian constructions of “invert” and “homosexual,” occupies not the periphery of the nation but rather a cosmopolitan position, instrumental to projects of war, colonialism, and neoliberalism. A Taste for Brown Bodies argues that practices and subjectivities that we understand historically as forms of homosexuality have been regulated and normalized as an extension of the US nation-state, laying bare the tacit, if complex, participation of gay modernity within US imperialism.
Hiram Perez
Associate Professor of English
OFFICE Eleanor Butler Sanders Hall 304
PHONE (845) 437-5658
BOX 242
EMAIL hiperez@vassar.edu
Perez, Hiram. A taste for brown bodies: gay modernity and cosmopolitan desire
T.E. Adams
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 53.8 (Apr. 2016): p1155.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
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Perez, Hiram. A taste for brown bodies: gay modernity and cosmopolitan desire. New York University, 2015. 177p bibl index ISBN 9781479818655 cloth, $89.00; ISBN 9781479845866 pbk, $25.00; ISBN 9781479846757 ebook, contact publisher for price
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2015-17137 MARC
Perez (English, Vassar College) offers a provocative study that identifies connections between modern gay identity, sexual desire, US imperialism, and national identity. In particular, he explores how modern gay identities are infused with--and even constituted by--movement, consumption, and exoticization of primitive, "brown" bodies; shows how historical cultural texts (e.g., Billy Budd), icons (e.g., cowboys), and events (e.g., images and practices of lynching) circulate in contemporary discourses about sexual desire (e.g., torture photographs from Abu Ghraib, a fetish about black penises, ideas about shame and repression); and describes how interpretations of work emanating from outside the US--especially interpretations by [white] queer theorists--can promote colonial fantasies and disregard the cultural conditions that contributed to the production of the the texts. Perez also explains how "the closet," the canonical metaphor of modern gay identity, disregards important uses of silence, ambiguity, and the lived circumstances of sexual minorities. Since queer theory has become a part of US nationalism--a nationalism that inherently exoticizes, commodifies, and silences primitive, brown bodies--Perez examines the ways in which queer theorists can promote racist, colonialist, and nationalist ideologies that discipline disruptive (primitive, brown) queer subjects. Summing Up: ** Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.--T. E. Adams, Northeastern Illinois University
Adams, T.E.
“A Taste for Brown Bodies: Gay Modernity and Cosmopolitan Desire” by Hiram Perez— The Role of Race in Queer Theory
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a taste for brown bodies
Perez, Hiram. “A Taste for Brown Bodies: Gay Modernity and Cosmopolitan Desire”, NYU Press, 2015.
The Role of Race in Queer Theory
Amos Lassen
It is interesting to note that neither queer theory nor queer activism has fully dealt with race as part of its studies. Hiram Perez’s new book, “A Taste for Brown Bodies”, explores the development of gay modernity and its “romanticization of the brown body”. His focus is on three figures with elusive queer histories—the sailor, the soldier, and the cowboy and he shows what he considers to be “heroic masculinity” and how these influenced and became the agents for the expansion of “the US borders and neocolonial zones of influence”.
Perez describes what he calls “an enduring homonationalism that goes back to the late 19th century and the “birth” of he homosexual. dating to the “birth” of the homosexual and shows that American imperialist expansion was visualized for and through gay men. He does this through the analysis of literature, film, and photographs from the 19th to the 21st centuries. He looks at Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Anne Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain”, James Baldwin’s “Going to Meet the Man” and others as well as photos of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison and proposes that modern gay male identity, often traced to late Victorian constructions of “invert” and “homosexual,” occupies not just the periphery of the nation but instead a cosmopolitan position that was necessary for projects such as war, colonialism, and neo-liberalism. Practices and subjectivities that we understand historically as forms of homosexuality have been since regulated and normalized as an extension of the US nation-state and show the complex participation of gay modernity within US imperialism. Ultimately Perez shows the coming together of cosmopolitanism and homosexuality. While this was written basically as a scholarly text, the beautiful prose and the convincing arguments make this readable for all who are interested. I am sure that this will engender debate.
Below is a look at the Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
The Queer Afterlife of “Billy Budd” 25
“Going to Meet the Man” in Abu Ghraib 49
The Global Taste for Queer 77
You Can Have My Brown Body and Eat It, Too! 97
Gay Cowboys Close to Home 125
Notes 153
Bibliography 163
Index 169
About the Author 179