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Queer historiography

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Queer historiography is the study and interpretation of history through a queer lens, focusing on the experiences, contributions, and representations of LGBTQ+ individuals and communities. It challenges traditional narratives by emphasizing the significance of sexual and gender diversity in historical contexts.
lightbulbAbout this topic
Queer historiography is the study and interpretation of history through a queer lens, focusing on the experiences, contributions, and representations of LGBTQ+ individuals and communities. It challenges traditional narratives by emphasizing the significance of sexual and gender diversity in historical contexts.

Key research themes

1. How do affective embodiment and archival practices inform queer historiography?

This research theme explores the intersection between embodied affect, memory, and archival methodologies within queer historiography. It investigates how queer historical experiences are preserved, interpreted, and transmitted through both physical archives and embodied cultural practices, emphasizing the dynamic relationship between bodies, feelings, and historical materials. This has significant implications for extending traditional historiographical methods to better capture the multiplicity and fluidity of queer lives and histories.

Key finding: The paper highlights the theoretical development connecting archival work with embodied queer experiences, particularly through the lens of affect and phenomenology. It advances the concept of the body as a form of living... Read more
by Xi Liu
Key finding: This study develops a non-representational queer reading framework that charts 'queer sensation'—the affective and sensory dimensions that permeate queer documentary and kinship beyond visible representations. Using Wu Hao's... Read more
Key finding: The essay foregrounds affect theory and relational encounters as modalities for understanding queer social life and representation. It theorizes parties and gatherings as affective spaces that produce queer communal and... Read more
Key finding: This work provides empirical narratives elucidating how queer men experience and contest normative constructions of bodies and identities, revealing intersectional reflexivity as a mode of queer consciousness. It connects... Read more

2. What are the methodological innovations and challenges in queer historiography and queer methods?

This theme addresses the development and theoretical challenges of queer methodological frameworks within historiography and social research. It interrogates how queer studies have navigated disciplinary boundaries, grappled with anti-methodological suspicions inherited from queer theory, and innovated in approaches to studying sexuality, identity, and history. The research under this theme foregrounds the role of intersectionality, reflexivity, and critiques of normative epistemologies in advancing queer approaches to knowledge production and historiographical practice.

Key finding: The work articulates the paradoxical suspicion towards method in queer theory while advocating for a queer methodological turn that critically interrogates normative research protocols. It proposes queer methods that... Read more
Key finding: This essay critically surveys queer anthropology's conceptual tensions among identity, normativity, and desire, resisting teleological narratives of progress in queer studies. It underscores the productive frictions and... Read more
Key finding: The paper critiques prevalent essentialist and strategic readings of genderbending and cross-dressing in historical religious texts, emphasizing how Queer Theory and Deconstruction offer alternative interpretive tools that... Read more

3. How do queer historiographies negotiate the construction of historical narratives and identities across time and space?

This theme investigates the ways queer historiography constructs, revises, and challenges historical narratives and identities, particularly focusing on the genealogies of sex and gender, temporalities, and the politics of representation. It includes explorations into the formation of hierarchical binaries, critiques of heteronormative historical teleologies, and the situatedness of queer identities within shifting socio-political contexts, encompassing cultural, regional, and intersectional dimensions.

Key finding: This study provides a multidisciplinary genealogy linking archaic state formation, notably through the invention of writing, with the institutionalization of hierarchical binaries such as male-female and insider-outsider. It... Read more
Key finding: The article applies post-Foucauldian historicism and queer unhistoricism to examine how plausible deniability in historical texts—specifically classical Graffiti and Roman poetry—has obscured expressions of queer desire. It... Read more
Key finding: This article employs queer temporal frameworks, such as reproductive futurism and chrononormativity, to analyze the Book of Judith, revealing how its narrative and protagonist subvert normative linear histories and... Read more
Key finding: The paper investigates homophobic textual and visual historiographical constructions of two Polish kings, demonstrating how their alleged non-heteronormative sexualities were weaponized in historical discourse to fabricate... Read more
Key finding: This work critically engages with the evolution of LGBTQ historiography, especially pre-Stonewall histories, highlighting the contributions and limitations of dominant scholarship such as D’Emilio's social constructionist... Read more
Key finding: This collective work analyzes the evolution and debates surrounding queer sexualities and identities within historiographic and disciplinary formations. It situates queer theory as a critical tool for destabilizing normative... Read more
Key finding: This study uncovers overlooked English-language historical and literary materials predating the Stonewall era that construct queer subjects within historical narratives. It challenges the dominant notion of queer history as... Read more
Key finding: This essay traces the genealogy of 'queer' as an analytic and identity category, situating queer theory’s emergence within the socio-political struggles of the late 20th century. It explicates the tension between minoritizing... Read more
Key finding: Turner’s work historicizes queer theory as emerging from postwar social and intellectual upheavals and rooted in poststructuralist philosophy, particularly Foucault. The paper delineates queer theory's critique of... Read more

All papers in Queer historiography

In November of 2022, The Walking Dead (TWD) ended an eleven-year run, leaving a devoted fan base bereft of their favorite show but eagerly awaiting more spinoffs in the coming years. At its conclusion, The Walking Dead left an even more... more
ITALIANO Nuova versione (aggiornata a luglio 2025) della mappa storica LGBTI di Bologna (disponibile anche in inglese). Realizzata in collaborazione con Bologna Welcome ed Er Emilia Romagna for dummies. ENGLISH New version (updated in... more
This book aims to show the integration of lesbians in a western context through all types of mainstream media (film, television and Internet). The study used a mixed research methods, theoretical and media analysis were conducted, as well... more
Polish historiography concerned with the lives of kings and queens has-as yet-not been subjected to a major revaluation and re-interpretation from the point of view of gay and lesbian or queer studies. This is despite the fact that at... more
The present study aims to explore the boundaries of "lesbian" (in)visibility during the early modern period. The field of lesbian historiography lies at the heart of the history of sexuality, as it has developed since the 1970s onwards.... more
Plausible deniability has presented both problems and opportunities to queer people and queer historical projects. Some scholars have avoided reading one woman expressing desire for another in the graffito CIL IV 5296. The speaker of... more
Because of certain similarities between the Maccabean accounts of Nicanor against the Jews, and the arrogant “Holofernes” who sought to take Jerusalem, some commentators presume that the Book of Judith was written during - and mirrored -... more
Seria possível atualizar o passado a partir de uma perspectiva queer não apenas através de uma história de representações de LGBTTQIA+ e de dissidências sexuais, mas de um gesto arqueológico em busca de sensações? O interesse por tentar... more
This essay is a point of departure for an archaelogy of parties through affects, relationships and encounters. How can we live together? How can we share experiences and cross borders? This is a broad issue, and I do not intend to map... more
The proposal of this essay is to reread the terms archeology and genealogy so to suggest a possible history of artistic statements through sensations. The article has a theoretical and methodoogical perpsective that intends to... more
Raymond Williams developed a vocabulary and framework for analyzing the ideological forces at work in literature and art, as objects, but also in terms of their production and distribution. This article looks back at his elaboration of... more
The Book of Judith and its main character are fascinating for the ways in which they play with time and history. This article argues that theoretical frameworks of queer temporality are instructive for understanding Judith. Judith's... more
To search for Lucio Cardoso and his masterpiece CHRONICLE OF THE MURDERED HOUSE ((https://www.openletterbooks.org/products/chronicle-of-the-murdered-house) ) is to search for a genealogy of destruction, catatrophe and decadence from... more
Academic research on Late Biblical/Rabbinic Judaism or early Christianity and Gender has often reproduced essentialist understandings of sex/gender binaries, sexuality and gender roles, creating narratives of genderbending, like... more
Lisa Ben's “Cinema Ramblings” in the 1940s underground publication Vice Versa mark some of the first media reviews to focus on homosexual themes, representations, and subtexts from a self-proclaimed lesbian perspective. While still... more
This is my latest thinking on queer unhistoricism, a revision to some extent of my previous position. These are notes for an ongoing project I have recently begun. They are a kind of methodological statement directed to Italianists in... more
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