Not Just a Book Club: Gendered Sexual Identity through the Lens of Women’s Book Clubs

• In Event: 035 - Section on Sex and Gender Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 13. Leisure Groups and Gender

Abstract

This project utilizes mixed methodology in an international comparison of women’s book clubs to examine how Irish and American women construct desire and sexual identity. This research consists of ethnographic work attending book club meetings and conducting narrative interviews in Colorado and Ireland. Through discussions of desire and sexuality among women’s fiction readers, the author seeks to identify the ways in which book club members express feelings of sexual freedom or emancipation, develop a sense of sexual desire, and construct narratives of sexual identity. Through a comparative sociological examination of contemporary women’s fiction and its readers we can better understand how women construct sexual identity amidst gendered cultural norms.

Author

• Christy Craig, University of Kansas