Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
Virgin Envy sets out to re-conceive the ways that we describe and relate to virginity as a cultural construct. Who is a virgin? How do we lose our virginities? What if we regret our "first time"?
Contributors to Virgin Envy everything from medieval romance to Bollywood films to Twilight and True Blood, to destabilize the many assumptions about sexual purity. In particular, the hymen is called into question. How is virginity determined for those without a hymen? How do we account for the ways in which the "geography of the hymen" has changed over the course of history? And what about male and queer virginity? Issues of commodification, postcoloniality, and religious diversity are also addressed.
"An ambitious, wide-ranging, and eclectic collection." Corrinne Harol, Enlightened Virginity in Eighteenth-Century Literature
"Boldly and unapologetically reclaims the meaning of the term 'virgin.' Without giving too much away, spaces to talk about the tensions of 'normal' and 'deviant' sexual desires are opened. And, determining who is and who isn't a virgin is fascinatingly at the forefront of this text."
"Explores in depth...what virginity is like--what it stands in for, what it is groomed and manipulated and fetishized to represent--as much as what it is."
"Unreservedly recommended for community, university, and college Gender Studies collections."
Jonathan Allan is Canada Research Chair in Queer Theory and Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and English and Creative Writing at Brandon University, Brandon, Manitoba. He is the author of Reading from Behind: A Cultural Analysis of the Anus.
Cristina Santos is an Associate Professor at Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario. Her current research investigates the monstrous depictions of women as aberrations of feminine nature vis-à-vis the socio-culturally proscribed norm. Publications include Defiant Deviance: The Irreality of Reality in the Cultural Imaginary; The Monster Imagined: Humanity's Re-Creation of Monsters and Monstrosity; and Monstrous Deviations in Literature and the Arts.
Adriana Spahr received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. She is an Associate Professor at the Department of Humanities at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta. She explores the interdisciplinary connections between cultural and political components in Latin American literature, especially in Argentina. Her last co-authored book, Madre de Mendoza/Mother of Mendoza, reflects her current research interest in testimonial literature.