literary-ethnography: Mother Camp, by Esther Newton This book, by a student of Clifford Geertz at the University of Chicago, is an ethnographic investigation of female impersonators and the closeted gay community of the mid-1960s.  It is not a particularly beautiful ethnography, but it is a text that is rich with questions about the ethics of representation.  It is a short book about a small population of female impersonators in the Midwest, and is very teachable.  This book predates Gender Trouble, and explores the performativity of gender long before Judith Butler gave us a formal language to talk about it. 

literary-ethnography:

Mother Camp, by Esther Newton

This book, by a student of Clifford Geertz at the University of Chicago, is an ethnographic investigation of female impersonators and the closeted gay community of the mid-1960s.  It is not a particularly beautiful ethnography, but it is a text that is rich with questions about the ethics of representation.  It is a short book about a small population of female impersonators in the Midwest, and is very teachable.  This book predates Gender Trouble, and explores the performativity of gender long before Judith Butler gave us a formal language to talk about it. 

Source: literary-ethnography

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