Celebrate Ace Week with these reading recommendations
From 22–28 October, we are celebrating Ace Week (formerly Asexual Awareness Week), ‘an annual campaign to raise awareness, build community, and create change’ (aceweek.org). Asexual identities have been historically marginalised and invisible in everyday life, and there is still much work to do to improve ace visibility and acceptance.
One of our key priorities in the library is advancing human-centred and inclusive knowledge systems and spaces. This includes promoting diverse voices in our collection, working to make our spaces safe and welcoming for everyone, and hosting events and activities that allow people to engage with a range of perspectives.
If you want to learn more about asexuality, we have a lot of fantastic resources! In our collection, you can find fiction, memoirs, nonfiction and films featuring the range of experiences of ace people.
Memoirs, fiction and graphic novels:
- Gender queer: a memoir by Maia Kobabe; colors by Phoebe Kobabe
- The bone people by Keri Hulme
- Loveless by Alice Oseman
- Heartstopper by Alice Oseman
- Is love the answer? by Uta Isaki
Film: (A)sexual directed by Angela Tucker; produced by Big Mouth Productions
Nonfiction, history, research and culture:
- Asexualities: feminist and queer perspectives edited by Megan Milks, Karli June Cerankowski
- Understanding asexuality by Anthony F. Bogaert
- Asexual erotics: intimate readings of compulsory sexuality by Ela Przybylo
- Asexuality and Freudian-Lacanian Psychoanalysis Towards a Theory of an Enigma by Kevin Murphy
- Bisexual and pansexual identities: exploring and challenging invisibility and invalidation by Nikki Hayfield
- Emergent identities: new sexualities, genders and relationships in a digital era by Rob Cover
- The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Sex and Sexuality by Lori Watson
- The queer games avant-garde: how LGBTQ game makers are reimagining the medium of video games by Bonnie Ruberg
- Gender, sex, and politics: in the streets and between the sheets in the 21st century edited by Shira Tarrant
- Masks of Dionysus edited by Thomas H. Carpenter and Christopher A. Faraone
- LGBTQAI+ books for children and teens: providing a window for all by Christina Dorr and Liz Deskins; foreword by Jamie Campbell Naidoo
You can find more scholarship about asexuality using combinations of the following search terms in Deakin Library Search and databases:
- asexual* OR “asexual orientation” OR “gray asexuality” OR aromatic* OR demisexual*
- asexual*AND “sexual orientation”
- asexual* AND “human sexuality”
- asexual* AND “sexual attraction”
Note: You might find that some of these terms are not used as widely in academic articles as they are in popular articles, videos, zines and so on. This is largely because subject terms in this emerging field of research are still developing.
Find further tips and key databases on this topic by exploring the Finding Articles – Gender and Sexuality Studies LibGuide.
Do you have any further ace reading recommendations? Let us know about them, and request an item for the library’s collection.
Header image credit: Image by alicia_mb on Freepik