Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2020 -

Examining public restrooms in the US, Davis (Princeton Univ.) conducts both a historical investigation of public bathrooms and a contemporary discussion with stakeholders from municipal, educational, and cultural institutions that "explore the effects of [institutional and ideological] history on the increasing popularity of ungendered restrooms." The author not only analyzes restrooms and gender, but also situates discussions about public restrooms in the realm of class and "status boundaries." Writing clearly and concisely, Davis adeptly contextualizes terms throughout the text, as he offers his readers a nuanced look at public restrooms throughout US history. The conclusion encourages calls for action around expanded access to public restrooms, as Davis writes that "what we need are more public inclusive restrooms--where 'more' is a qualitative modifier indicating that we need to collectively approach restrooms, particularly inclusive ones, as a public good." This is an essential title for all libraries, and its readership should not be limited to gender scholars or public policy decision makers alone. Students new to history, sociology, and gender studies will also greatly benefit from this study.Summing Up: Essential. All readership levels.

Dyer's book is driven by the compelling argument that "the utopian force of childhood is not its inherent innocence but its potential repair of stagnancy, repressed memory, and historical ruin." Childhood innocence, as Dyer (Brock Univ., Canada) understands it, is a construct owned by the socially privileged and withheld from children of less-advantaged groups, those marginalized by race, ethnicity, class, gender, and/or sexuality. Such marginalization produces social violence from which hope sometimes springs via works of art that embody childhood's "queer aesthetics," which are "deemed strange and unruly" by the white, heteronormative social order. To explore the tensions between violence and hope embedded in childhood's queer aesthetics, Dyer integrates a range of theoretical perspectives, drawing from postcolonial studies, feminist theory, psychoanalysis, and queer of color critique. Through this complex theoretical lens she analyzes visual art by Ebony G. Patterson and Jonathon Hobin, fiction by Hanya Yanagihara, and collected drawings by Palestinian children from Gaza. The range of Dyer's objects of study is as impressive as her command of contemporary critical theory, and her project promises to significantly enrich the field of child studies and beyond.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.