Finding Out: An Introduction to LGBTQ Studies

About Deborah T. MeemJonathan F. AlexanderKey BeckMichelle A. Gibson

Deborah T. Meem is Professor Emerita of Womens Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati. Her academic specialties are Victorian literature LGBTQ Studies and the 19th-century womans novel. She earned a PhD from Stony Brook University in 1985. Her work has appeared in Journal of the History of Sexuality Feminist Teacher Studies in Popular Culture and elsewhere. She has edited four works by Victorian novelist and journalist Eliza Lynn Linton: The Rebel of the Family (Broadview 2002) Realities (Valancourt 2010) The Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland (Victorian Secrets 2011) and Sowing the Wind (Victorian Secrets 2015). With Michelle Gibson she coedited Femme/Butch: New Considerations of the Way We Want to Go (2002) and Lesbian Academic Couples (2005) both published by Routledge Press. With Jonathan Alexander she wrote Dorian Gray Tom Ripley and the Queer Closet (CLCWeb 2003) Jonathan Alexander is Chancellors Professor of English and Gender & Sexuality Studies at the University of California Irvine. He is author co-author or editor of twenty-one books including several works of queer creative nonfiction including Stroke Book: The Diary of a Blind Spot (Fordham 2021) and the Creep Trilogy consisting of Creep: A Life a Theory an Apology (punctum 2017) Bullied: The Story of an Abuse (punctum 2021) and Dear Queer Self: An Experiment in Memoir (Acre Books 2022).  He is also published extensively in LGBT and sexuality studies including the books: The Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetorics (co-edited with Jacqueline Rhodes 2021) Sexual Rhetorics: Methods Identities Publics (co-edited with Jacqueline Rhodes Routledge 2015); Techne: Queer Meditations on Writing the Self (co-authored with Jacqueline Rhodes Computers and Composition Digital Press 2015); Bisexuality and Queer Theory: Intersections Connections and Challenges (co-edited with Serena Anderlini DOnofrio Routledge 2012); Literacy Sexuality Pedagogy: Theory and Practice (Utah State 2008); and Bisexuality and Transgenderism: InterSEXions of the Others (co-edited with Karen Yescavage Routledge 2004). Key Beck is a community activist and independent scholar. Their areas of interest are racial equity gender and sexuality and empathy-based intersectionality. They earned their MA from the University of Cincinnati in 2013. They have partnered with non-profits educational institutions and governmental and social service agencies. They are a member of Storefronts a resident-led social practice group that uses art to examine the inequalities that exist in their neighborhood and the greater Cincinnati area. They were recently featured in Cincinnati Magazine (2020) and were honored with a 2020 LGBTQ+ Leadership award presented by the Ohio Diversity Council. Key currently works as a Outreach Prevention Specialist and Racial and Gender Equity Consultant. Michelle A. Gibson is Professor Emerita of the Department of Womens Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati. Her scholarship focuses on Sexuality Studies and pedagogy. Her most recent writing applies queer and postmodern identity theories to pedagogical practice and popular culture. With Jonathan Alexander she edited QP: Queer Poetry an online poetry journal and she and Alexander also edited a strain of JAC: Journal of Advanced Composition titled Queer Composition(s). With Deborah Meem she coedited Femme/Butch: New Considerations of the Way We Want to Go (2002) and Lesbian Academic Couples (2005).