De-Centering Sexualities

This book of critical rural geography breaks new ground by drawing attention to sex and sexualities outside the metropolis. It explores sexualities and sexual experiences in a variety of rural and marginal spaces with international contributions from a wide range of disciplines. These include: literary and cultural studies, lesbian and gay studies, geography, history and law. Among the topics uncovered are:* a lesbian in rural England* sexual life in rural Wales* sexuality in rural South Africa * scandal in the American South: sex, race and politics* nature and homosexuality in literature* Derry/Londonderry as a sexual space* how 'country folk' are sexualised in popular culture.

PART I Non-metropolitan sexualities , 1 The production of gay and the return of power 2 Marginality on the tropic 3 Region, religion and sexuality: pilgrim through this barren land 4 Margins of the city: towards a dialectic of suburban desire PART II Beyond the metropolis 5 Eroticizing the rural 6 Imagined geographies and sexuality politics: the city, the country and the age of consent 7 The queer politics of gay pastoral 8 Skirting the margins: Anne Lister, self-representation and lesbian identity in early nineteenth-century Yorkshire PART III Deconstructing metropolitan models 9 Marginalization and resistance: lesbians in Mexico 10 Remapping same-sex desire: queer writing and culture in the American heartland 11 Getting your kicks on Route 66!: stories of gay and lesbian life in rural America, c. 1950–1970s 12 Mapping decolonization of male homoerotic space in Pacific Canada PART IV Devolving sexualities 13 Devolutionary desires 14 On the borders of allegiance: identity politics in Ulster 15 Transgression in Glasgow: a poet coming to terms

Richard Phillips lectures in Geography at Salford University. His publications include Mapping Men and Empire: A Geography of Adventure (1997). David Shuttleton lectures in English and Film at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He has published on eighteenth-century and modern literature, and is the author of Queer Pastoral: Nature, Homosexuality and Modernity. Diane Watt is senior lecturer in English at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. She has published an edited collection and a book, both about women’s writing and history. She has also written a number of articles about gender and sexuality, and contributed to Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender and Sexuality (1997).