Claire Colebrook is an Australian cultural theorist, currently appointed Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University. She has published numerous works on Gilles Deleuze, visual art, poetry, queer theory, film studies, contemporary literature, theory, cultural studies and visual culture.
An introductory guide to gender, Claire Colebrook's Gender explores the way Western thought uses terms of binary opposition in conceptualising and understanding the world. Colebrook analyses this while explaining how different theorists have written about sex/gender, tracing the concept's development from the Enlightenment (1700s) to the early 2000s.
Pretty solid, information-packed intro to gender. Sorta liked the way the book repeats itself a lot - good for learning/remembering and it made it possible for me to understand stuff if I didn't get the first time around - but sorta didn't (I was prepping for an exam! Time was of the essence!). I also really appreciated the bits on literary criticism (really makes me wanna read Frankenstein now!).
Radically changed how I understand the term gender. I also learned a lot about the differences between the pre-, modern, and post- by reading this text. It's another foundational one for me.