Locating Queer Histories: Places and Traces across the UK

Description

Ranging from the mid-19th century to the present, and from Edinburgh to Plymouth, this powerful collection explores the significance of locality in queer space and experiences in modern British history. The chapters cover a broad range of themes from migration, movement and multiculturalism; the distinctive queer social and political scenes of different cities; and the ways in which places have been reimagined through locally led community history projects. The book challenges traditional LGBTQ histories which have tended to conceive of queer experience in the UK as a comprising a homogeneous, national narrative. Edited by leading historians, the book foregrounds the voices of LGBTQ-identified people by looking at a range of letters, diaries, TV interviews and oral testimonies. It provides a unique and fascinating account of queer experiences in Britain and how they have been shaped through different localities. Cover Contents List of figures Notes on contributors Acknowledgements Introduction Matt Cook and Alison Oram 1 Great expectations: Migrating to Edinburgh Alva Träbert 2 ‘He had a pair of shoulders like the Tyne Bridge’: Queer evocations of the North East and the legacy of Out on Tuesday and Out Gareth Longstaff 3 Sectarianism and queer lives in Northern Ireland since the 1970s Sean Brady 4 Queer transplanting from the Himalayas to Yorkshire: Reginald Farrer’s loves for men and alpine plants (1880–1920) Dominic Janes 5 A queer history of Parson’s Pleasure, Oxford George Townsend 6 Tracing queer Black spaces in interwar Britain Caroline Bressey and Gemma Romain 7 London suburbs and the co-creation of LGBT+ Jewish identities Searle Kochberg and Margaret Greenfields 8 Brighton beach: Pleasures and politics of queer community, 1950–94 Louise Pawley 9 Taking pride in Plymouth’s past Alan Butler 10 A ‘queer collection’: The Anglo colony in Florence, 1840s–1950s Rachel Hope Cleves Selected bibliography Index