In Gay Print Culture, Juan Carlos Mezo González investigates the relationship between transnational gay liberation politics, periodicals, and images in Mexico, the United States, and Canada from the early 1970s through the mid-1990s. Mezo González examines the production, content, circulation, and reception of leading gay periodicals published in these countries, including community-based gay liberation publications and commercially oriented gay lifestyle and erotic magazines. He demonstrates how they aimed to visualize the political goals of gay liberation, particularly those concerning the liberation and celebration of homoerotic desires. Mezo González contends that visualizing these goals allowed activists, editors, publishers, and artists to foster the formation of gay communities and identities while advancing gay liberation movements at the local, national, and international levels. In so doing, he furthers understandings of the transnational nature of gay periodicals, the relationship between gay liberation politics and visual culture, and the existing tensions between the liberation of some and the oppression of others across the American continent.

An environmental history of resistance, negotiation, and conservation on the Massachusetts coast

An hour north of Boston, Parker River National Wildlife Refuge occupies the southern three-quarters of Plum Island, a barrier island off the Massachusetts coast. Parker River is a nationally renowned birding destination and the second most-visited wildlife refuge in the Northeast, drawing over 300,000 visitors annually. Today, environmentally minded Massachusetts barely remembers the decade-long fight that reduced the refuge to half its original size. Get Plum Island! tells the forgotten story of how six small towns in Essex County (Newbury, West Newbury, Rowley, Ipswich, Groveland, and Georgetown) fought the establishment of the refuge in the 1940s. Through political organizing across local, state, and federal levels, the opposition nearly abolished the refuge and ultimately succeeded in making it smaller.

The conflict was deeply shaped by class, geography, and competing visions of land use. On one side were elite conservationists—sportsmen, ornithologists, and preservation advocates from Boston, Cambridge, and Newton—who envisioned a federally protected habitat. On the other side of the conflict, a group of mostly middle- and working-class men, farmers, and local hunters organized a resistance to the establishment of a refuge. Through protests, public hearings, and even aggression toward visiting federal officials, local opposition made the case that their communities had clammed, farmed, and hunted the disputed lands before there even was a United States government. They recounted a version of their history as founders of the nation that made them, in their view, entitled to the land that was given to them by the English Crown. In telling this story, Get Plum Island! reveals how ordinary citizens can challenge—and reshape—federal authority, and offers a timely case study in the politics of land, class, and conservation.

Special Issue Editor: Haiqing Yu

Haiqing Yu. COVID-19, Satirical Activism, and Chinese Youth Culture: An Introduction

Research Articles
Ying Zhu and Junqi Peng.  From Diaosi to Sang to Tangping: The Chinese DST Youth Subculture Online
Shaohua Guo. Moments of "Madness": Cynicism in Times of COVID
Howard Choy. Laughter in the Time of Coronavirus: Epidemic Humor and Satire in Chinese Women's Digital Diaries
Shaoyu Tang. Political In Between: Streaming Stand-Up Comedy and Feminist Reckoning in Contemporary Mainland China
Jingxue Zhang and Charlie Yi Zhang. The Power of Citation: Feminist Counter-Appropriation of State Discourses in Post-Reform China

Book Reviews
Ethan Tussey. Revised Research Methodology for the Age of Media Industries Speculation - Review of Specworld: Folds, Faults, and Fractures in Embedded Creator Industries by John Thornton Caldwell, University of California Press, 2023
Michael Keane. Precarious Creativity and the State in New Era China - Review of Chinese Creator Economies: Labor and Bilateral Creative Workers by Jian Lin, New York University Press, 2023

Capoeira began as a martial art developed by enslaved Afro-Brazilians. Today, the practice incorporates song, dance, acrobatics, and theatrical improvisation—and leads many participants into activism.

Lauren Miller Griffith’s extensive participant observation with multiple capoeira groups informs her ethnography of capoeiristas--both individuals and groups--in the United States. Griffith follows practitioners beyond their physical training into social justice activities that illuminate capoeira’s strong connection to resistance and subversion. As both individuals and communities of capoeiristas, participants march against racial discrimination, celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth, organize professional clothing drives for job seekers, and pursue economic and environmental justice in their neighborhoods. For these people, capoeira becomes a type of serious leisure that contributes to personal growth, a sense of belonging, and an overall sense of self, while also imposing duties and obligations.

An innovative look at capoeira in America, Graceful Resistance reveals how the practicing of an art can catalyze action and transform communities.

A visionary program for national renewal, the Green New Deal aims to protect the earth’s climate while creating good jobs, reducing injustice, and eliminating poverty. Its core principle is to use the necessity for climate protection as a basis for realizing full employment and social justice.

Jeremy Brecher goes beyond the national headlines and introduces readers to the community, municipal, county, state, tribal, and industry efforts advancing the Green New Deal across the United States. Brecher illustrates how such programs from below do the valuable work of building constituencies and providing proofs of concept for new ideas and initiatives. Block by block, these activities have come together to form a Green New Deal built on a strong foundation of small-scale movements and grassroots energy.

A call for hope and a better tomorrow, The Green New Deal from Below offers a blueprint for reconstructing society on new principles to avoid catastrophic climate change.