Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes - Scholarly Works

Scholarly Works

La Fountain-Stokes's academic writing has focused mostly on queer Puerto Rican culture. His book Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora (University of Minnesota Press, 2009) discusses LGBT Puerto Rican migration from a cultural studies perspective, with chapters on Luis Rafael Sánchez, Manuel Ramos Otero, Luz María Umpierre, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Rose Troche, Erika Lopez, Arthur Aviles, and Elizabeth Marrero. Queer Ricans is based on La Fountain-Stokes's Ph.D. dissertation, which he wrote under the supervision of Jean Franco. The author received funding for this project in 1997 from the International Migration Program at the Social Science Research Council.

He is currently working on a new book titled Translocas and Transmachas: Trans Diasporic Puerto Rican Drag which is on Puerto Rican and diasporic theater, performance, and activism since the 1960s, and on the links between cross-dressing, sex/gender modification, and physical displacement in a geographic zone marked by frequent migrations. In this project, La Fountain-Stokes analyzes the work of a number of contemporary performers and activists including Sylvia Rivera, Holly Woodlawn, Mario Montez, Freddie Mercado, Jorge Merced, Eduardo Alegría, Javier Cardona, Lady Catiria, Elizabeth Marrero, and Erika Lopez. He has another less developed book project on the use of animal words such as pato (duck in Spanish) to refer to homosexuality in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean.

La Fountain-Stokes has published scholarly articles in journals such as CENTRO Journal, Revista Iberoamericana, and GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, including his essay on his travels to Cuba, "De un pájaro las dos alas," which first appeared in GLQ in 2002 and was reprinted in Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles, edited by the Jamaican American gay writer Thomas Glave. La Fountain-Stokes describes this article as a "fictionalized, experimental narrative or autoethnography based on travel experiences as a gay Puerto Rican theater critic and former graduate student."

La Fountain-Stokes frequently publishes short newspaper articles in Spanish, particularly in En Rojo, the cultural supplement of the Puerto Rican weekly Claridad. These include theater and performance reviews, book reviews, and essays on popular culture, such as his piece on a calendar by the popular Puerto Rican male model and former police officer Peter Hance. La Fountain-Stokes is also a frequent speaker at professional meetings and college campuses, and has talked about his work in several countries, including Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, and Spain. He has also been actively involved in a number of professional organizations, particularly the Modern Language Association, the Latin American Studies Association, the Puerto Rican Studies Association, the Caribbean Studies Association, and the City University of New York Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS), holding positions of leadership in several of these.

Read more about this topic:  Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes

Famous quotes containing the words scholarly and/or works:

    Almost all scholarly research carries practical and political implications. Better that we should spell these out ourselves than leave that task to people with a vested interest in stressing only some of the implications and falsifying others. The idea that academics should remain “above the fray” only gives ideologues license to misuse our work.
    Stephanie Coontz (b. 1944)

    In the works of man, everything is as poor as its author; vision is confined, means are limited, scope is restricted, movements are labored, and results are humdrum.
    Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821)