Date of Publication: 2008-09-01

This volume explores, among other issues, the perpetuation of hegemonic masculinity in Evangelical universities; the pharmaceutical industry’s promotion of biometaphors involving a shopping strategy which revolves around compulsory heterosexuality; the perpetuation of Greek-Cypriot men’s sexual superiority over women; the Catholic Church's attempt to impose a restrictive view of religion and of sexual ethics; the consolidation of American TV shopping channels as a setting where middle-class femininity and consumption are linked stereotypically; the negotiation of gender- and sex-related norms in groups of British Bangladeshi girls. Even heterosexuality, as the unmarked form of sexual identity and the primary site for the reproduction of gender difference, needs to reassert its normative and prescriptive status, maybe through the silent workings of tradition. By suggesting the concept of transition, we resist seeing the idea of identity as a fixed and definitive category. Gender and sexual identities are never at rest. One is never finished developing into a woman or a man, or any other gender/sexual identity.

Contributors include: Joan Pujolar, Andrea Simon-Maeda, Allyson Jule, Stina Ericsson, Agnieszka Kiełkiewicz-Janowiak, Joanna Pawelczyk, Nóra Schleicher, Elli Doukanari, Pilar Garcés-Conejos, Lidia Tanaka, José Santaemilia and Pia Pichler.

The editors are Associate Professors of English Language and Linguistics at the Universitat de València. José Santaemilia has edited Género, lenguaje y traducción (Valencia, 2003) and Gender, sex and translation: The manipulation of identities (Manchester, 2005), and his main research interests are gender/sex, language and translation. Patricia Bou has edited Ways into Discourse (Granada, 2006) and coedited Pragmática, discurso y sociedad (Valencia, 2007), and her research interests concern social and intercultural pragmatics.