Gay and Lesbian History

Parallel Worlds?: Queered Spaces and the Art of Camouflage

by Chris Brickell

As For Chelsea, Goodbye to All That

by Michael Carosone

Co-authored with Joseph LoGiudice.  Originally published in The Huffington Post. 

African Masks and the Arts of Passing in Gertrude Stein's "Melanctha" and Nella Larsen's" Passing"

by Corinne Blackmer

What the Sands Remember

by Vanessa Agard Jones

GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 2012 Volume 18, Number 2-3: 325-346.

Saint-Pierre and Sainte-Anne sit on opposite shores—both territorially and symbolically—of Martinique, a French... more Saint-Pierre and Sainte-Anne sit on opposite shores—both territorially and symbolically—of Martinique, a French territory in the Caribbean Sea. During the nineteenth century, Saint-Pierre was known as the “Sodom” of the Antilles, as a cosmopolitan city where decadence and liberal sexual mores were at the heart of bourgeois and elite culture. In 1902 Mount Pelée, the volcano that sits just above the city, erupted—killing Saint-Pierre's population of over thirty thousand within five seconds. Today, the black, volcanic sand beaches that line the coast remind visitors to Saint-Pierre of the city that once was. Sainte-Anne is a town with a far different reputation. During the 1950s it was known as a refuge for rebels, for people who contested the continued dominance of white and mixed-race elites in the lives of ordinary (mostly black) Martinicans, and was the center of the island's small cultural nationalist movement. Nearly fifty years later, the town retains that reputation—but Sainte-Anne is known for another reason, too, for it is home to one of Martinique's few meeting spaces for men who have sex with men, a secluded section at the end of the commune's most popular beach, Les Salines.

This essay seeks to cross temporal, scalar, and disciplinary boundaries while revisiting tropes of queer invisibility that mark representations of same-sex desire in the Caribbean. Cycling from the world described in the 1901 erotic novel Une nuit d'orgie à Saint-Pierre, Martinique to field notes taken in 2010 among men who frequent Les Salines, this essay unites, in a provisional way, a scattered archive of same-sex desire on the island, while relating these desires critically to place. These archives ask us to reconsider a narrative that insists on movement—away from Martinique, away from the Caribbean, away from the global South—as the grounding force for a radical queer (of color) politics. Instead of privileging diasporic subjectivities, these markers of local presence and emplacement offer an alternative framing of what it means to stay put. They give us access to modes of queer relationality that resist documentation, but are indicative of the kinds of lives that certain subjects live: shot through with ambiguity and grounded in a refusal of fixed identity politics. Sand emerges as a compelling metaphor for this kind of theoretical and ethnographic intervention, as its ability to be diffuse yet still irreducibly material provides a model for one way to understand the memory of same-sex desire and gender transgression. Making use of fragments, then, this essay thinks simultaneously through the sexual politics of memory and landscape, linking queer presence to the sands of both Saint-Pierre and Sainte-Anne.

Eighteenth-century British Erotica I & II, 10 vols.

by Patrick Spedding

Co-edited with Alexander Pettit; Published by Pickering and Chatto, 2002, 2005.

Although scholars of the British eighteenth century have become increasingly attuned to questions of sexuality,... more Although scholars of the British eighteenth century have become increasingly attuned to questions of sexuality, corporeality, and legalism, they have not heretofore had easy access to one of the period's richest funds of data: the erotica and pornography that permeated the culture.
This set reprints many of the period's most notorious works, including eight from The Fifteen Plagues of a Maiden-Head (1707) to Harris's List of Covent-Garden Ladies (1786(?)–93) that resulted in highly publicized court battles and in some instances helped shape laws on censorship that survived into modernity. As they did in the eighteenth-century bookshop, 'homosexual' and 'heterosexual' works intermingle, alongside of works that claim legal, medical, or political legitimacy, and works that pretend to nothing but prurience. Virtually all the works have been out of print since the eighteenth century

The Emerald City of Oz: The city of Sydney as a gay space in Australian feature films

by Scott McKinnon

Studies in Australasian Cinema, Vol 5 Issue 3, pp. 307-320

Australian feature films featuring gay male characters have consistently defined the inner-city – and particularly the... more Australian feature films featuring gay male characters have consistently defined the inner-city – and particularly the inner-city of Sydney – as a gay space. This article examines a range of such films within the historical context of the emergence of gay male community and culture in Sydney. While this history reveals the complex and contested nature of gay men's connections to the city, on-screen depictions have tended to mask such complexity in favour of a simplistic urban/gay versus rural/straight divide. By repeatedly exploring gay life in inner-city spaces through the eyes of heterosexual, rural visitors, Australian films have developed and replicated discourses that have seen Sydney defined as the 'true' home of gay male community and culture.

Leksikon Queer teorije

by Adriana Zaharijević

review of The World Turned: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and Culture

by David Schleifer

Taking the Word 'Out' West: Movie Reception and Gay Spaces

by Scott McKinnon

‘… And the Theatre was Full of Poofs and I Thought it was Fantastic’: Researching the History of Gay Men and the Movies

by Scott McKinnon

What was the true relationship between a Hittite man and his LU HA.LA-SU according to the Hittite Laws in Bronze Age Anatolia? Partner, shareholder, Associate, household live in man friend, an amibuity or just a much oversighted case of Same-Sex Marriage Bronzed style.

by Mark Shindel

Proposition 8 struck down US Court of Appeals 10-16696

by Romero Anton Montalban Anderssen

"Felice chi è diverso". Sandro Penna, la ricerca della diversità e la "santità del nulla"

by Giulio Savelli

Extended version of the talk " 'Felice chi è diverso'. Sandro Penna e la ricerca della diversità" published in Identità e diversità nella lingua e nella letteratura italiana Atti del XVIII congresso dell'A.I.S.L.L.I. - Lovanio, Louvain La Neuve, Anversa, Bruxelles 16/19 luglio 2003, a c. di M.Bastiansen, M. Caniato, W. Geerts, G.P. Giudicetti, S. Gola, I. Lanslots, C. Maeder, S. Marzo, G. Mavolo, I. Melis, F. Musarra, B. Van den Bossche, Firenze, Cesati, 2007, vol. III, pp. 99-110.

Review of Richard Dellamora's Radclyffe Hall: A Life in the Writing.

by Jana Funke

Peacock Revolution: Mainstreaming Queer Styles in Post-War Britain, 1945-1967

by Justin Bengry

Socialist History 36 (2010): 55-68. Special issue on Gender and Sexuality.

In the late 1950s, Carnaby Street designer and retailer John Stephen began a systematic program to decouple himself,... more In the late 1950s, Carnaby Street designer and retailer John Stephen began a systematic program to decouple himself, the products he sold, and the very notion of male fashionability from associations of effeminacy and homosexuality. Of course this project was never complete, but nor did it need to be. Carnaby Street shops, beginning with those of John Stephen, traded on a sense of playful camp that distinguished them from what were seen as old-fashioned or short-back-and-sides fashion establishments and worldviews. This article examines how producers and retailers of queer styles interacted with 1950s and 1960s consumers, and how these consumer interactions illuminate the changing relationship between homosexuality and hetero-normative constructions of masculinity in mid twentieth-century Britain.

Whitman's Lifelong Endeavor: Leaves of Grass at 150.

by Geoffrey Schramm

In this article I write about new advances in Whitman studies, particularly web-based projects such as The Walt... more In this article I write about new advances in Whitman studies, particularly web-based projects such as The Walt Whitman Archive.

"The Underground Closet: Political and Sexual Dissidence in Eastern Europe," in Ellen E. Berry, ed., Genders 22: Postcommunism and the Body Politic (1995), 229- 251.

by Kevin Moss

'Ja nisam prava zena:' Gender and Sexuality in Two Memoirs from Beograd."Hodzic A. & J. Postic (Eds.). Transgressing Gender: Two is not Enough for Gender (E)quality: The Conference Collection. Zagreb: CESI & Women's Room, 2006, 290-308. In Croatian: "'Ja nisam prava zena: rod i seksualnost u dvama memoarima iz Beograda." Hodzic A. & J. Postic (Eds.) Transgresija roda: spolna/rodna ravnopravnost znaci vise od binarnosti; zbornik konferencijskih radova. Zagreb: CESI & Zenska soba, 2006, 286-302. 2.

by Kevin Moss

Two memoirs describe quite different strategies for enacting gay desire in Beograd in the 80s and 90s. Vjeran... more Two memoirs describe quite different strategies for enacting gay desire in Beograd in the 80s and 90s. Vjeran Miladinović's Terezin sin (2001) reveals the author's adventures as Merlinka, a well-known transvestite prostitute. Merlinka was the star of Želimir Žilnik's anti-war film Dupe od mramora (Marble Ass, 1994). Uroš Filipović's Staklenac (2002) is the diary of his sexual escapades at more or less the same time.
Heteronormativity requires that biological sex, gender presentation, and sexual orientation be aligned and clearly legible (in other words, if one is biologically male, one should be masculine and desire sex with women); hence the frequent conflation between gender presentation and sexual orientation if a biological male desires men, he must be or act feminine. Cultures, subcultures, and individuals confront this conflation in different ways. Gay male subcultures sometimes adopt "feminine" signs (dress, behavior, language) to signal their desire for other men.
I will look at Vjeran's and Uros's narratives in terms of how their perception and performance of gender intersect with their sexual orientation (both are biological males and both desire sex with men). Vjeran's transvestism is not the standard MTF narrative of a "woman born in a man's body," but rather a strategy to maximize sexual contacts with men, many of whom also desire women. Uroš, on the other hand, disapproves of feminized gay men. Yet in one episode he is attracted to a woman dressed as a boy cruising men, which he finds paradoxical.

Queering Canada: Gay and Lesbian Political and Social Activism, 1969-1982

by Matthew Hayday

Teaching module on gay and lesbian rights in the 1970s and early 1980s for Nelson's "Visions" Canadian History Modules Project.

In 2005, Canada became the fourth country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage.  However, less than four... more In 2005, Canada became the fourth country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage.  However, less than four decades earlier, most forms of same-sex intercourse were illegal in Canada under the Criminal Code.  Changes to how Canadians and their governments responded to questions of sexual orientation were only obtained with great difficulty and persistence on the part of activists.  This module covers the first major phase of Canadian gay and lesbian activism which covers the years that led up to the creation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982.  It looks at the strategies employed by activists who were seeking both legal and social change, and examines the responses that they engendered in Canadian society.

The Queer I: the ethics of authenticity and the historical voice

by Kelly Gardiner