Books by Thomas Lawrence Long
A handbook for academic and professional writing in nursing (Oxford University Press).
The Meaning Management Challenge
The chapters in this collection, representing the multidisciplinary character of the book, provid... more The chapters in this collection, representing the multidisciplinary character of the book, provide a careful exposition on health, illness, and disease from disciplines that are sometimes neglected or dismissed by so called pure science or medical research. Each chapter, from its unique disciplinary and cultural perspective, reminds us of the necessity to be aware of the limitations of medical science, the danger of theoretical binarisms, the impact of political and economical agendas on health care institutionalisation, and the indispensability of continuous conversations with people from different disciplines, professions, organisations, institutions, and cultures. All of the eleven chapters, in general, point to the same issue: the meaning management of health, illness and disease, involves a socio-cultural course of action in which the right of each participant to make sense of health, illness and disease should be respected, and humility in modern biomedical sciences toward diversity ought to be emphasized.
Looks at how both anti-gay and AIDS activists use apocalyptic language to describe the AIDS crisi... more Looks at how both anti-gay and AIDS activists use apocalyptic language to describe the AIDS crisis.
Since public discourse about AIDS began in 1981, it has characterized AIDS as an apocalyptic plague: a punishment for sin and a sign of the end of the world. Christian fundamentalists had already configured the gay male population most visibly affected by AIDS as apocalyptic signifiers or signs of the "end times." Their discourse grew out of a centuries-old American apocalypticism that included images of crisis, destruction, and ultimate renewal. In this book, Thomas L. Long examines the ways in which gay and AIDS activists, artists, writers, scientists, and journalists appropriated this apocalyptic rhetoric in order to mobilize attention to the medical crisis, prevent the spread of the disease, and treat the HIV infected.
Using the analytical tools of literary analysis, cultural studies, performance theory, and social semiotics, AIDS and American Apocalypticism examines many kinds of discourse, including fiction, drama, performance art, demonstration graphics and brochures, biomedical publications, and journalism and shows that, while initially useful, the effects of apocalyptic rhetoric in the long term are dangerous. Among the important figures in AIDS activism and the arts discussed are David Drake, Tim Miller, Sarah Schulman, and Tony Kushner, as well as the organizations ACT UP and Lesbian Avengers.
"Thomas L. Long offers perceptive readings of recent novels and dramas and links the discussion to his broader argument. His insights and conclusions are shrewd and certainly help one think about the works in fresh and illuminating ways." — Paul S. Boyer (University of Wisconsin), Author of When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belife in Modern American Culture, and Editor-in-Chief of The Oxford Companion to United States History
"This book is impressive in its depth of scholarship and fascinating to read." — Susan J. Palmer (Dawson College), author of AIDS as an Apocalyptic Metaphor in North America
"His effort . . . is an impressive and important insight that should be kept in mind in an age when gay activism is often at odds with vocal religious opposition." --H.E. Osborne (Queen's University), reviewed in Choice Reviews Online
"Long's . . . religious background, coupled with his impressive knowledge of literature and performance theory, permits a balance of disdain for fundamentalist views with an understanding of the basic human need for spirituality . . . . Long has admirably succeeded in presenting not only a semiotic history of the AIDS pandemic and a view of the vast changes in social perceptions of homosexuality during the past thirty years, but in this essential study he charts strategies of survival . . ." --James Fisher (Wabash College), reviewed in Theatre Journal
" . . . in the chapters on Armageddon and Paradise, Long examines the Apocalypse through strong historic analysis to arrive at an understanding of how people currently understand the illness, and this makes for fascinating reading." --Jasmine Gartner (State University of New York), reviewed in Social History of Medicine
". . . knowledeable and interesting study . . . . a valuable addition to analyses of cultural responses to AIDS in America." Sarah Graham (University of Leicester), reviewed in Journal of American Studies
"Beyond being an important look at the effect of religiously inspired rhetoric on LGBT lives, this book is also an impressive documentation of queer responses to HIV/AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s, and a hugely helpful repository and remembrance of art and activism in the face of loss." --Erin Runions (Pomona College), reviewed in GLQ.
Journal Articles by Thomas Lawrence Long
Literature and Medicine , 2013
Journal of Medical Humanities, 2013
While even today lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people might have cause to distrust the h... more While even today lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people might have cause to distrust the healthcare establishment, how much more fragile was the relationship between sexual minorities and health professionals in the first decade of the AIDS epidemic. Dissent from consensus healthcare and health research then was a question of survival in the face of political and medical intransigence. This article focuses on one version of AIDS dissent: The narrative representations of AIDS in fiction by the gay African-American fantasy writer Samuel R. Delany, which rejected the rigid binarism of “safe” and “unsafe” sex practices, Delany’s evidence-based dissent. He also engaged in a related form of cultural dissent: speaking the unspeakably obscene, at a time when Silence = Death. Delany called into question both the inferential leaps based on limited epidemiological research that were represented in safer sex guidelines and the widespread public reticence about sexual behavior.
LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory, 2012
Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 2011
Journal of Communication Inquiry, 2000
Abstract Mainstream AIDS activists in the 1980s responded to demonizing and stigmatizing represen... more Abstract Mainstream AIDS activists in the 1980s responded to demonizing and stigmatizing representations of the HIV infected by attempting to “normalize” people living with AIDS. However, some gay men in the 1980s and early 1990s, catalyzed by antigay politics since the late 1970s and overwhelmed by the excessively apocalyptic and overdetermined representations of AIDS in popular media, deliberately embraced the role of sexual and medical pariah, celebrated social anxieties about their public danger as vectors of ...
Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 2012
Inquiry, Jan 1, 2009
Abstract: Two national studies of Americans' changing reading habits, published by t... more Abstract: Two national studies of Americans' changing reading habits, published by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), quantified the grounds for concerns that college and university educators have expressed in recent years based on their own anecdotal evidence from observing students." Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America"(2004) documented a decline in literary reading among adults in over two decades of longitudinal studies conducted by the US Census Bureau. More recently," To Read or Not to Read: A ...
Harrington Gay MenʼS Literary Quarterly, Jan 1, 2007
Harrington Gay MenʼS Literary Quarterly, Jan 1, 2006
In Henry Alley's “The Rembrandt Brotherhood,” a celebration of mature male friendship and of... more In Henry Alley's “The Rembrandt Brotherhood,” a celebration of mature male friendship and of flowers, the character of Leo finds himself at a crossroads (literally and figuratively) and comes out of the closet to a colleague. When Leo asks the colleague if he is okay with this, his friend replies,“'Have been ever since I studied those flowers that try to mimic queen bees in shape and color–just to attract the male bees, even when the flowers are male themselves. Nature is a continual drag show, in case you haven't noticed.'” Several stories ...
Harrington Gay MenʼS Literary Quarterly, Jan 1, 2008
Of physical phenomena, the most familiar is the least understood: the attraction of bodies–both i... more Of physical phenomena, the most familiar is the least understood: the attraction of bodies–both in gravity and lust. What we call “weight” is the measure of attraction, and lovers weigh words and gestures, measuring them out either parsimoniously or prodigally. Australian Glenn Chapman's narrator in “One Man for Every Box” measures out his past in an Excel spreadsheet, in contrast to his lover's conventional past. In “Killing Lorenzo” Richard Jespers masterfully creates a musical fugue, weaving three themes confronting a man in mid-life. A ...
Harrington Gay MenʼS Literary Quarterly, Jan 1, 2006
A student of mine in an honors seminar of Early American Literature recently changed her name, no... more A student of mine in an honors seminar of Early American Literature recently changed her name, not by marriage but by choice. It signaled a larger change in identity, in how she appropriates the past (embracing her maternal lineage) and in how she advances into the future (applying and being admitted to the College of William and Mary). She comes to mind as the quarterly changes its name from that of its birth (Harrington Gay Men's Fiction Quarterly) to its new name, Harrington Gay Men's Literary Quarterly, which signals a ...
Harrington Gay MenʼS Literary Quarterly, Jan 1, 2007
Harrington Gay MenʼS Literary Quarterly, Jan 1, 2008
… Gay MenʼS Literary …, Jan 1, 2008
The English biologist JBS Haldane famously once wrote,“Now, my own suspicion is that the universe... more The English biologist JBS Haldane famously once wrote,“Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose,” which I take as the epigraph for this issue, a collection of stories that explore the weird, the uncanny, the offbeat. In modern gay life there are two competing discourses: We queer people are just like everybody else (except in one respect), so we buy into the consumer branding that emblematizes “normality”; or, We queer people are very different from everybody else, so ...
Uploads
Books by Thomas Lawrence Long
Since public discourse about AIDS began in 1981, it has characterized AIDS as an apocalyptic plague: a punishment for sin and a sign of the end of the world. Christian fundamentalists had already configured the gay male population most visibly affected by AIDS as apocalyptic signifiers or signs of the "end times." Their discourse grew out of a centuries-old American apocalypticism that included images of crisis, destruction, and ultimate renewal. In this book, Thomas L. Long examines the ways in which gay and AIDS activists, artists, writers, scientists, and journalists appropriated this apocalyptic rhetoric in order to mobilize attention to the medical crisis, prevent the spread of the disease, and treat the HIV infected.
Using the analytical tools of literary analysis, cultural studies, performance theory, and social semiotics, AIDS and American Apocalypticism examines many kinds of discourse, including fiction, drama, performance art, demonstration graphics and brochures, biomedical publications, and journalism and shows that, while initially useful, the effects of apocalyptic rhetoric in the long term are dangerous. Among the important figures in AIDS activism and the arts discussed are David Drake, Tim Miller, Sarah Schulman, and Tony Kushner, as well as the organizations ACT UP and Lesbian Avengers.
"Thomas L. Long offers perceptive readings of recent novels and dramas and links the discussion to his broader argument. His insights and conclusions are shrewd and certainly help one think about the works in fresh and illuminating ways." — Paul S. Boyer (University of Wisconsin), Author of When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belife in Modern American Culture, and Editor-in-Chief of The Oxford Companion to United States History
"This book is impressive in its depth of scholarship and fascinating to read." — Susan J. Palmer (Dawson College), author of AIDS as an Apocalyptic Metaphor in North America
"His effort . . . is an impressive and important insight that should be kept in mind in an age when gay activism is often at odds with vocal religious opposition." --H.E. Osborne (Queen's University), reviewed in Choice Reviews Online
"Long's . . . religious background, coupled with his impressive knowledge of literature and performance theory, permits a balance of disdain for fundamentalist views with an understanding of the basic human need for spirituality . . . . Long has admirably succeeded in presenting not only a semiotic history of the AIDS pandemic and a view of the vast changes in social perceptions of homosexuality during the past thirty years, but in this essential study he charts strategies of survival . . ." --James Fisher (Wabash College), reviewed in Theatre Journal
" . . . in the chapters on Armageddon and Paradise, Long examines the Apocalypse through strong historic analysis to arrive at an understanding of how people currently understand the illness, and this makes for fascinating reading." --Jasmine Gartner (State University of New York), reviewed in Social History of Medicine
". . . knowledeable and interesting study . . . . a valuable addition to analyses of cultural responses to AIDS in America." Sarah Graham (University of Leicester), reviewed in Journal of American Studies
"Beyond being an important look at the effect of religiously inspired rhetoric on LGBT lives, this book is also an impressive documentation of queer responses to HIV/AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s, and a hugely helpful repository and remembrance of art and activism in the face of loss." --Erin Runions (Pomona College), reviewed in GLQ.
Journal Articles by Thomas Lawrence Long
Since public discourse about AIDS began in 1981, it has characterized AIDS as an apocalyptic plague: a punishment for sin and a sign of the end of the world. Christian fundamentalists had already configured the gay male population most visibly affected by AIDS as apocalyptic signifiers or signs of the "end times." Their discourse grew out of a centuries-old American apocalypticism that included images of crisis, destruction, and ultimate renewal. In this book, Thomas L. Long examines the ways in which gay and AIDS activists, artists, writers, scientists, and journalists appropriated this apocalyptic rhetoric in order to mobilize attention to the medical crisis, prevent the spread of the disease, and treat the HIV infected.
Using the analytical tools of literary analysis, cultural studies, performance theory, and social semiotics, AIDS and American Apocalypticism examines many kinds of discourse, including fiction, drama, performance art, demonstration graphics and brochures, biomedical publications, and journalism and shows that, while initially useful, the effects of apocalyptic rhetoric in the long term are dangerous. Among the important figures in AIDS activism and the arts discussed are David Drake, Tim Miller, Sarah Schulman, and Tony Kushner, as well as the organizations ACT UP and Lesbian Avengers.
"Thomas L. Long offers perceptive readings of recent novels and dramas and links the discussion to his broader argument. His insights and conclusions are shrewd and certainly help one think about the works in fresh and illuminating ways." — Paul S. Boyer (University of Wisconsin), Author of When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belife in Modern American Culture, and Editor-in-Chief of The Oxford Companion to United States History
"This book is impressive in its depth of scholarship and fascinating to read." — Susan J. Palmer (Dawson College), author of AIDS as an Apocalyptic Metaphor in North America
"His effort . . . is an impressive and important insight that should be kept in mind in an age when gay activism is often at odds with vocal religious opposition." --H.E. Osborne (Queen's University), reviewed in Choice Reviews Online
"Long's . . . religious background, coupled with his impressive knowledge of literature and performance theory, permits a balance of disdain for fundamentalist views with an understanding of the basic human need for spirituality . . . . Long has admirably succeeded in presenting not only a semiotic history of the AIDS pandemic and a view of the vast changes in social perceptions of homosexuality during the past thirty years, but in this essential study he charts strategies of survival . . ." --James Fisher (Wabash College), reviewed in Theatre Journal
" . . . in the chapters on Armageddon and Paradise, Long examines the Apocalypse through strong historic analysis to arrive at an understanding of how people currently understand the illness, and this makes for fascinating reading." --Jasmine Gartner (State University of New York), reviewed in Social History of Medicine
". . . knowledeable and interesting study . . . . a valuable addition to analyses of cultural responses to AIDS in America." Sarah Graham (University of Leicester), reviewed in Journal of American Studies
"Beyond being an important look at the effect of religiously inspired rhetoric on LGBT lives, this book is also an impressive documentation of queer responses to HIV/AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s, and a hugely helpful repository and remembrance of art and activism in the face of loss." --Erin Runions (Pomona College), reviewed in GLQ.