Karen Tongson
Biographic Data
| ID | 217691 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Karen Tongson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Karen |
| FAMILY NAME | Tongson |
| SIGNATURE | TONGSON K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Southern California |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Narrative Plenitude in The Ultimatum: Queer Love
This essay explores the styles of lesbian representation on display in the Netflix reality series, The Ultimatum: Queer Love. From its inclusion of masculine, non-binary cast members, to its in-jokes about instantaneous lesbian intimacy and attachment, the series offers what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick wished for twenty years ago: a narrative plentitude that succeeds in capturing the quotidian messiness of lesbian desire and commitment
Critical Response V: Rather Like a Habit
The Light That Never Goes Out: Butchlalis de Panochtitlan Reclaim “Lesser Los Angeles”
Coda: Love among the Ruins: Contact, Creativity, and Klub Fantasy
Illustrations
Empire of My Familiar
Relocating Queer Critique: Lynne Chan’s JJ Chinois
Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries
Behind the Orange Curtain
The Sexual Imaginarium
This dialogue overviews the scholarly importance of Kath Weston’s 1995 essay “Get Thee to a Big City: Sexual Imaginary and the Great Gay Migration.” Situating the article within its historical moment and tracing its influence across contemporary queer theory and its subfields, our conversation finds that Weston facilitated new avenues for considering matters of sexual geography, regionalism, and metronormativity for a wide variety of queer subjec…
“Gimme Gimme This, Gimme Gimme That”: Listening with, to, and through José Muñoz: The following is a transcript of a roundtable that took place on February 21, 2105 at the IASPM-US conference in Louis…
Empty Orchestra: The Karaoke Standard and Pop Celebrity
This essay explores the disputed origins of the first karaoke machine and explains how karaoke eventually evolved into a term of judgment in star- making media such as reality vocal competition shows. What Tongson calls the double- edged "karaoke standard" - whether a competitor's performance sounds like a direct imitation of the original and thus, according to judges, "like karaoke" - was famously invoked by Simon Cowell during the early seasons…
In Memoriam: Tributes to José Esteban Muñoz, 1967–2013
In Memoriam:Tributes to José Esteban Muñoz, 1967–2013 Karen Tongson (bio) On December 4, 2013, our dean of the brown commons, our unruly compass, our institutional ally, our comrade in chismis, our companion species, our friend, José Esteban Muñoz, died unexpectedly at the age of forty-six. This space in American Quarterly is usually devoted to documenting events—to reviewing and rendering them for readers, audiences, and scholars who often can’t…
Queer Fundamentalism
Hand-wringing conversations about queer theory, its continued viability, its expiration date, and its applicability to a range of subjects and objects have been at the heart of the field since its inception in the early 1990s. This essay argues that, fundamentally, queer (as we continue to discuss the term) is an institutional formation, which occasionally and hubristically imagines its reach in other areas, both touching and being touched by “th…
Choral Vocality and Pop Fantasies of Collaboration: Choral Vocality and Pop Fantasies of Collaboration
A Note from the Editors
Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries
What queer lives, loves and possibilities teem within suburbia’s little boxes? Moving beyond the imbedded urban/rural binary, Relocations offers the first major queer cultural study of sexuality, race and representation in the suburbs. Focusing on the region humorists have referred to as "Lesser Los Angeles"—a global prototype for sprawl—Karen Tongson weaves through suburbia’s "nowhere"spaces to survey our spatial imaginaries: the aesthetic, crea…
A Note from the Editors
JJ Chinois's Oriental Express, or, How a Suburban Heartthrob Seduced Red America
Research Article| December 01 2005 JJ Chinois's Oriental Express, or, How a Suburban Heartthrob Seduced Red America Karen Tongson Karen Tongson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Social Text (2005) 23 (3-4 (84-85)): 193–217. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-23-3-4_84-85-193 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Karen Tongson; JJ Chinois's Oriental Express, or, How a Suburban Heartthrob Se…
White Men Are Hysterical
Book Review| October 01 2004 White Men Are Hysterical White Men Aren't Thomas DiPiero Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. viii + 338 pp. Karen Tongson Karen Tongson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google GLQ (2004) 10 (4): 631–633. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-10-4-631 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Karen Tongson; White Men Are Hysterical. GLQ 1 October 20…
Empty Orchestra: The Karaoke Standard and Pop Celebrity
This essay explores the disputed origins of the first karaoke machine and explains how karaoke eventually evolved into a term of judgment in star- making media such as reality vocal competition shows. What Tongson calls the double- edged "karaoke standard" - whether a competitor's performance sounds like a direct imitation of the original and thus, according to judges, "like karaoke" - was famously invoked by Simon Cowell during the early seasons…
The Sexual Imaginarium
This dialogue overviews the scholarly importance of Kath Weston’s 1995 essay “Get Thee to a Big City: Sexual Imaginary and the Great Gay Migration.” Situating the article within its historical moment and tracing its influence across contemporary queer theory and its subfields, our conversation finds that Weston facilitated new avenues for considering matters of sexual geography, regionalism, and metronormativity for a wide variety of queer subjec…
Critical Response V: Rather Like a Habit
White Men Are Hysterical
Book Review| October 01 2004 White Men Are Hysterical White Men Aren't Thomas DiPiero Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. viii + 338 pp. Karen Tongson Karen Tongson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google GLQ (2004) 10 (4): 631–633. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-10-4-631 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Karen Tongson; White Men Are Hysterical. GLQ 1 October 20…
JJ Chinois's Oriental Express, or, How a Suburban Heartthrob Seduced Red America
Research Article| December 01 2005 JJ Chinois's Oriental Express, or, How a Suburban Heartthrob Seduced Red America Karen Tongson Karen Tongson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Social Text (2005) 23 (3-4 (84-85)): 193–217. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-23-3-4_84-85-193 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Karen Tongson; JJ Chinois's Oriental Express, or, How a Suburban Heartthrob Se…
A Note from the Editors
Choral Vocality and Pop Fantasies of Collaboration: Choral Vocality and Pop Fantasies of Collaboration
A Note from the Editors
Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries
What queer lives, loves and possibilities teem within suburbia’s little boxes? Moving beyond the imbedded urban/rural binary, Relocations offers the first major queer cultural study of sexuality, race and representation in the suburbs. Focusing on the region humorists have referred to as "Lesser Los Angeles"—a global prototype for sprawl—Karen Tongson weaves through suburbia’s "nowhere"spaces to survey our spatial imaginaries: the aesthetic, crea…
In Memoriam: Tributes to José Esteban Muñoz, 1967–2013
In Memoriam:Tributes to José Esteban Muñoz, 1967–2013 Karen Tongson (bio) On December 4, 2013, our dean of the brown commons, our unruly compass, our institutional ally, our comrade in chismis, our companion species, our friend, José Esteban Muñoz, died unexpectedly at the age of forty-six. This space in American Quarterly is usually devoted to documenting events—to reviewing and rendering them for readers, audiences, and scholars who often can’t…
Queer Fundamentalism
Hand-wringing conversations about queer theory, its continued viability, its expiration date, and its applicability to a range of subjects and objects have been at the heart of the field since its inception in the early 1990s. This essay argues that, fundamentally, queer (as we continue to discuss the term) is an institutional formation, which occasionally and hubristically imagines its reach in other areas, both touching and being touched by “th…
“Gimme Gimme This, Gimme Gimme That”: Listening with, to, and through José Muñoz: The following is a transcript of a roundtable that took place on February 21, 2105 at the IASPM-US conference in Louis…
Empty Orchestra: The Karaoke Standard and Pop Celebrity
This essay explores the disputed origins of the first karaoke machine and explains how karaoke eventually evolved into a term of judgment in star- making media such as reality vocal competition shows. What Tongson calls the double- edged "karaoke standard" - whether a competitor's performance sounds like a direct imitation of the original and thus, according to judges, "like karaoke" - was famously invoked by Simon Cowell during the early seasons…
The Sexual Imaginarium
This dialogue overviews the scholarly importance of Kath Weston’s 1995 essay “Get Thee to a Big City: Sexual Imaginary and the Great Gay Migration.” Situating the article within its historical moment and tracing its influence across contemporary queer theory and its subfields, our conversation finds that Weston facilitated new avenues for considering matters of sexual geography, regionalism, and metronormativity for a wide variety of queer subjec…
The Light That Never Goes Out: Butchlalis de Panochtitlan Reclaim “Lesser Los Angeles”
Coda: Love among the Ruins: Contact, Creativity, and Klub Fantasy
Illustrations
Empire of My Familiar
Relocating Queer Critique: Lynne Chan’s JJ Chinois
Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries
Behind the Orange Curtain
Narrative Plenitude in The Ultimatum: Queer Love
This essay explores the styles of lesbian representation on display in the Netflix reality series, The Ultimatum: Queer Love. From its inclusion of masculine, non-binary cast members, to its in-jokes about instantaneous lesbian intimacy and attachment, the series offers what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick wished for twenty years ago: a narrative plentitude that succeeds in capturing the quotidian messiness of lesbian desire and commitment
Critical Response V: Rather Like a Habit
Art (11 works) · History (10 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Art history (5 works) · Citation (5 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · Library science (5 works) · Queer (5 works) · Latin American and Latino Studies (4 works)