A true crime investigation into the 2001 murder of American exchange student Jamie Penich in Seoul, South Korea, focusing on the coerced false confession of fellow student Kenzi Snider who was pressured to admit killing Penich during a fabricated ‘lesbian encounter.’
An interdisciplinary academic anthology examining domestic spaces and homemaking through queer perspectives, with chapters analyzing everything from lesbian pulp fiction kitchens to queer bathrooms, closets, and gardens across multiple scholarly disciplines.
A groundbreaking 1973 sociological study that pioneered the social constructionist approach to sexuality, examining how sexual behaviors and identities—including lesbian and gay sexualities—are socially scripted rather than biologically determined.
An academic framework proposing the Black Queer Identity Matrix to integrate race and ethnicity variables into queer studies, specifically addressing Black lesbian female identity as interlocking systems of oppression involving gender, race, and sexual orientation.
A comprehensive dictionary documenting Polari, the secret language used by gay men and women through the twentieth century, alongside a broader collection of lesbian and gay slang from English-speaking countries.
This anthropological collection edited by Evelyn Blackwood examines homosexuality cross-culturally, including significant scholarship on female same-sex relationships and lesbian identities in diverse societies around the world.
This work examines the lived experiences of lesbians navigating work environments and family structures, documenting how lesbian women create and maintain their lives within contexts often designed without them in mind.
A candid essay collection by bisexual sexologist Carol Queen exploring sex-positive culture, sexual identity, sex work, and erotic experiences, combining memoir with cultural analysis and advocacy.
A 1956 psychoanalytic text arguing that homosexuality is a curable neurotic disease caused by pre-Oedipal conflicts, representing the dominant psychiatric establishment’s pathologizing view of lesbian and gay identities in the 1950s.
The first biography of thriller writer Patricia Highsmith draws on her private diaries, notebooks, and letters to reveal her secret life as a lesbian, her many relationships with women, and the connections between her sexuality and her groundbreaking psychological suspense novels.