Fiona Anderson Knihy

Tweed is a material that has a historical relationship with a very particular ideal of masculine identity; one coupled with connotations of tradition, and which denotes a certain class and social stature. The story of tweed is tied to a series of social and political shifts that have molded its development. This book considers the historical and social factors that helped to shape, change and define the characteristics of the group of fabrics that we call tweed since its emergence in the 1820s. Progressive changes in gender relations as well as the impact of globalization are explored as major factors in tweed's evolution into what is now a truly modern and flexible fashion material. This book is the first of its kind to recognize the resiliency of tweed and its importance in textiles and fashion today.

In the 1970s, Manhattan’s west side waterfront was a forgotten zone of abandoned warehouses and piers. Though many saw only blight, the derelict neighborhood was alive with queer people forging new intimacies through cruising. Alongside the piers’ sexual and social worlds, artists produced work attesting to the radical transformations taking place in New York. Artist and writer David Wojnarowicz was right in the heart of it, documenting his experiences in journal entries, poems, photographs, films, and large-scale, site-specific projects. In Cruising the Dead River, Fiona Anderson draws on Wojnarowicz’s work to explore the key role the abandoned landscape played in this explosion of queer culture. Anderson examines how the riverfront’s ruined buildings assumed a powerful erotic role and gave the area a distinct identity. By telling the story of the piers as gentrification swept New York and before the AIDS crisis, Anderson unearths the buried histories of violence, regeneration, and LGBTQ activism that developed in and around the cruising scene.