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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
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