Maria Isabel Romero-Ruiz – författare

The development of new sexualities and gender identities has become a crucial issue in the field of literary and cultural studies in the first years of the twenty-first century. The roles of gender and sexual identities in the struggle for equality have become a major concern in both fields. The legacy of this process has its origins in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the twentieth century. The Victorian preoccupation about the female body and sexual promiscuity was focused on the regulation of deviant elements in society and the control of venereal disease; homosexuals, lesbians, and prostitutes’ identities were considered out of the norm and against the moral values of the time. The relationship between sexuality and gender identity has attracted wide-ranging discussion amongst feminist theorists during the last few decades. The methodologies of cultural studies and, in particular, of post-structuralism and post-colonialism, urges us to read and interpret different cultures and different texts in ways that enhance personal and collective views of identity which are culturally grounded. These readings question the postmodernist concept of identity by looking into more progressive views of identity and difference addressing post-positivist interpretations of key identity markers such as sex, gender, race, and agency. As a consequence, an individual’s identity is recognized as culturally constructed and the result of power relations. Identities on the Move: Contemporary Representations of New Sexualities and Gender Identities offers creative insights on pressing issues and engages in productive dialogue. Identities on the Move to addresses the topic of new sexualities and gender identities and their representation in post-colonial and contemporary Anglophone literary, historical, and cultural productions from a trans-national, trans-cultural, and anti-essentialist perspective. The authors include the views and concerns of people of color, of women in the diaspora, in our evermore multiethnic and multicultural societies, and their representation in the media, films, popular culture, subcultures, and the arts.

This collection consists of a two-volume edition of primary source materials that document the asylum in the long nineteenth century. The focus of the collection will be on rare and difficult-to-access published and archival materials, arranged by topic criteria. Each volume will be a sort of 'compendium' of rarer sources. There is an introduction to the whole set and word introductions to each volume together with headnotes to each document or section of documents contextualizing the sources and pointing out anything particularly noteworthy.The sources feature all kinds of publications and archives including documents, laws, newspapers, medical texts, journals and books, etc. that can be considered nineteenth century primary/archival sources difficult to access. This two-volume edition has a very close connection with the history of medicine, the history of sexuality and the history of insanity in the long nineteenth century as well as with the history of institutions to contain and control the mentally insane and the sexually ‘deviant’.

This volume is concerned with Lock Hospitals and Magdalen Asylums in England in the nineteenth century, focusing on rare and difficult-to-access published and/or archival material. The introduction to this volume contextualises sources, addresses the state of the field, discusses language and highlights key themes such as gender, social class and religion. The text is organised around five sections: Lock Hospitals, Magdalen Asylums, medical and reform texts, Acts and legal texts, and newspapers and journal articles.Besides some of the archives for these institutions, the sources also contain archival and primary sources related with ideas about prostitutes and fallen women, legislation, philanthropy work and nineteenth century voluntary associations and organisations. Accompanied by extensive editorial commentary, this volume is of great interest to students and scholars of the history of medicine and the history of gender and sexuality in the long nineteenth century, as well as with the history of institutions to contain and control the sexually “deviant”.

The development of new sexualities and gender identities has become a crucial issue in the field of literary and cultural studies in the first years of the twenty-first century. The roles of gender and sexual identities in the struggle for equality have become a major concern in both fields. The legacy of this process has its origins in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the twentieth century. The Victorian preoccupation about the female body and sexual promiscuity was focused on the regulation of deviant elements in society and the control of venereal disease; homosexuals, lesbians, and prostitutes’ identities were considered out of the norm and against the moral values of the time. The relationship between sexuality and gender identity has attracted wide-ranging discussion amongst feminist theorists during the last few decades. The methodologies of cultural studies and, in particular, of post-structuralism and post-colonialism, urges us to read and interpret different cultures and different texts in ways that enhance personal and collective views of identity which are culturally grounded. These readings question the postmodernist concept of identity by looking into more progressive views of identity and difference addressing post-positivist interpretations of key identity markers such as sex, gender, race, and agency. As a consequence, an individual’s identity is recognized as culturally constructed and the result of power relations. Identities on the Move: Contemporary Representations of New Sexualities and Gender Identities offers creative insights on pressing issues and engages in productive dialogue. Identities on the Move to addresses the topic of new sexualities and gender identities and their representation in post-colonial and contemporary Anglophone literary, historical, and cultural productions from a trans-national, trans-cultural, and anti-essentialist perspective. The authors include the views and concerns of people of color, of women in the diaspora, in our evermore multiethnic and multicultural societies, and their representation in the media, films, popular culture, subcultures, and the arts.

This book makes an analysis of prostitution in Cambridge in the Victorian period based on different social and cultural discourses as well as on archival materials concerning institutions devoted to the control and regulation of promiscuity and venereal disease. Among them were the Cambridge Union Workhouse, the Cambridge Female Refuge, the Spinning House (Cambridge University Female Prison) or the town and county gaols. Also, data from the census and local and state regulations are of great relevance in the approach to the study of the «Great Social Evil» and its consequences for Victorian Cambridge. The city was divided into «town and gown» at the time, with the University having its power and regulation over all its premises through the Vice-Chancellor’s Court and its system of proctors, while the town council regulated the areas belonging to the city itself through the police. Therefore, University authorities, evangelicals and the middle-class joined their efforts to put an end to immorality, building Cambridge’s architecture of containment of sexual deviance.

This Open Access book considers the cultural representation of gender violence, vulnerability and resistance with a focus on the transnational dimension of our contemporary visual and literary cultures in English.

This Open Access book considers the cultural representation of gender violence, vulnerability and resistance with a focus on the transnational dimension of our contemporary visual and literary cultures in English.