Bertram J. Cohler

When viewed through the broad lens of social history, the story of sexual identity across place and time is infused with extraordinary contextual specificity. Different cultures in different historical eras have organized human sexuality in a multiplicity of diverse forms and functions, constructing stories of sexual identity that serve a larger social structure with master narratives of what it means to be a member of a given community, culture, and society. In examining the shifting narratives of sexual identity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and their impact on the process of human social development, this edited volume fuses historical, cultural, and psychological perspectives on human sexuality to articulate a rigorous interdisciplinary approach to the study of sexual lives. Recognizing the historical and cultural relativity of life-course development, the contributors seek to offer a comprehensive perspective on the ways in which identity is inherently a process of co-construction between individual and culture, thereby positing a significant role for the social in the development of sexual identity. Following a general introduction in which the volume editors explain the utility of a narrative approach to the study of sexual identity, the volume is organized into sections which deal with specific life-span considerations of sexuality: childhood and adolescence, adulthood, marriage and parenthood, and aging.

Exploring nearly sixty years of memoir and autobiography, ""Writing Desire"" examines the changing identity of gay men writing within a historical context. Distinguished scholar and psychoanalyst Bertram J. Cohler has carefully selected a diverse group of ten men, including historians, activists, journalists, poets, performance artists, and bloggers, whose life writing evokes the evolution of gay life in twentieth-century America. By contrasting the personal experience of these disparate writers, Cohler illustrates the social transformations that these men helped shape. Among Cohler's diverse subjects is Alan Helms, whose journey from Indiana to New York's gay society represents the passage of men who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s, when homosexuality was considered a hidden ""disease."" The liberating effects of Stonewall's aftermath are chronicled in the life of Arnie Kantrowitz, the prototypical activist for gay rights in the 1970s and the founder of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation. The artistic works of Tim Miller and Mark Doty evoke loss and shock during the early stages of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Cohler rounds out this collective group portrait by looking at the newest generation of writers in the Internet age via the blog of Bryan, who did the previously unthinkable: he ""outed"" himself to millions of people. A compelling mix of social history and personal biography, ""Writing Desire"" distills the experience of three generations of gay America.