June 2022: LGBTQ+ History

Pedagogy and Public History 

1) No Secret Anymore: Lesbian Representations in Cold War America, by Marcia M. Gallo (Magazine of History, March 2006) 

• To emphasize the importance of media in creating American attitudes about sexuality, this lesson plan utilizes visual examples of popular images of lesbians in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

2) Red, White, and Rainbow: The National Park Service’s LGBTQ Theme Study, by Megan Springate (Process History Blog, 2016) 

• A history of Heritage Initiatives by NPS. Specifically this article focuses on the LGBTQ Initiative, community involvement, and information on historic sites. 

3) Including LGBTQ Americans in Our Nation’s Heritage, by Chad Lord (Process History Blog, 2017) 

• A history of Stonewall through the lens of the NPS efforts to protect it as a historic site. 

4) Queer Digging in the Archives, by Tim Retzloff (Process History Blog, 2017) 

• A history of Queerness inside the archives and the struggle to find LGBTQ History. 

5) Teaching the Pulse Massacre, by Julio Capo, Jr. (Process History Blog, 2016) 

• Pedagogical strategies for teaching about the Pulse Nightclub Shooting in Orlando, while tending to students’ emotional and intellectual needs. 

6) Borderlands, Diasporas, and Transnational Crossings: Teaching LGBT Latina and Latino HIstories, by Horacio N. Roque Ramirez (Magazine of History, 2006) 

• A lesson plan for teaching about Latino LGBT history through survival strategies from primary sources. 

7) An Annotated Bibliography for Teaching the History of Courtship, by Beth Bailey (Magazine of History, 2004) 

• An index of History of Courtship sources organized By time period and thematically. 

8) The Histories They are A-Chaingin’: Sources for Teaching about the Movements of the 1960s, by Beth Bailey and David Farber (Magazine of History, 2006) 

• An annotated bibliography of works for teaching the 1960s including the Gay Liberation movement and Pride. 

9) Queer History, by Christina Hanhardt (The American Historian, May 2019)

• This article gives a broad overview of the study of Queer history.

10) Queering the Classroom, by Eric Gonzaba (The American Historian, May 2019)

• This article argues for the inclusion of queer history in the classroom, and offers resources for teachers to use.

Lived Experiences 

1) “What, Another Female Husband?”: The Prehistory of Same-Sex Marraige in America, by Ed Linenthal and Rachel Hope Cleves (JAH Podcasts, March 2015) 

• Ed Linenthal, executive editor of Journal of American History, speaks with Rachel Hope Cleves, Associate Professor of History at the University of Victoria. In this episode they discuss her article, “What, Another Female Husband?”: The Prehistory of Same-Sex Marriage in America which appears in the March 2015 issue of the JAH.

2) Queer Rage: Police Violence and the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969, by Marc Stein (Process History Blog, 2019) 

• “In the coming months, the anniversary of Stonewall will be celebrated with parties and parades. Many of us will mark and marvel over the progress that has occurred over the last fifty years. The ongoing devaluation of LGBT lives, loves, and lusts, however, should give us pause, and our collective ignorance about these other moments in our shared history is cause for shame rather than pride.” 

3) Stonewall and the Politics of Memory, by Timothy Stewart-Winter (Process History Blog, 2015) 

• An analysis of the role that films play in shaping public memory about the Stonewall Riots. 

4) Transforming Sex; Christine Jorgensen in the Postwar U.S., by Joanne Meyerowitz (Magazine of History, 2006) 

• This article places the history of post-war sexuality within its historical context and moves the discussion away from containment strategies. 

5) LGBTQ Radicalism as A Framework Beyond Rights, by Emily Hobson (The American Historian, May 2019)

• "A growing number of activists described sexual freedom as interwoven with struggles against imperialism, capitalism, and war. As they did so, they began to build movements toward gay liberation, trans liberation, and lesbian feminism."

6) Sea Gods, Brownies, and Temperamental Men: Asian Pacific Islanders in the Making of a Gay American Identity, by Amy Sueyoshi (The American Historian, May 2019)

• Without a doubt, Pacific Islanders and Asians centrally informed how white American men discovered their love for other men at the turn of the century. Perhaps then we can also trace the conflation of Pacific Islander and Asia, now understood as API, as having roots in the formation of a modern gay identity.

Legal Institutions and Queerness 

1) The Supreme Court’s Sexual Counter-Revolution, by Marc Stein (Magazine of History, 2006) 

• An analysis of the various Supreme Court Cases after World War II that redefined how the Federal Government approached the law and sex. 

2) Which History in Obergefell v. Hodges? by Nancy F. Cott (Process History, July 2016). 

• This article places Obergefell v. Hodges in its historical context. The necessity of context is important because many of the claims made by justice erase the “legality” of Gay Marraige in multiple cultures throughout the world before it being legally granted in the United States of America. 

3) “What’s Love Got to Do WIth It?” The Politics of Race and Marriage in the California Supreme Court’s 1958 Perez v. Sharp Decision, by Alex Lubin (Magazine of History, 2004) 

• A state specific look at Interacial marriage. This Case also pre-dates the 1967 Loving decision. This lesson plan allows for teaching both federalism and interracial marraige injustice. 

4) Timothy Stewart Winter: Queer Law and Order, by Timothy Stewart-Winter (Process History Blog, 2015) 

An Interview with Timothy Stewart-Winter about His article “Queer Law and Order: Sex, Criminality, and Policing in the Late Twentieth-Century United States” appears in the June 2015 special issue of the Journal of American History on “Historians and the Carceral State.”

5) Gender is Powerful: The Long Reach of Feminism, by Nancy Maclean (Magazine of History, 2006) 

• A history of feminist movements and their connection to Queer movements. 

Intersectionality 

1) “Have We a New Sex Problem Here?” Black Queer Women in the Early Great Migration, by Cookie Woolner (Process History, Oct. 2017) 

• An analysis of Black Queer lives in Chicago in the early 20th century. 

2) The Baker Street Vice Ring and the Birth of the Asian American Homo, by Amy Sueyoshi (Process HIstory Blog, 2017) 

• “As mores of gender and sexuality expanded for middle-class whites, one might assume that they did for newer Americans as well. Yet a closer look at San Francisco reveals just how narrow and constricting the “wide open town” could be for its Chinese and Japanese communities. Middle-class whites enjoyed new freedoms, but these freedoms were predicated on gendered and sexualized stereotypes of the “Orient.” Specifically, the formation of an urban gay community depended on the fundamental presumption that Chinese and Japanese culture and people facilitated male same-sex sexuality.” 

Trans Specific 

1) Transsexuality, by Talking History Staff (Talking History, Nov. 2002) 

• Talking History takes a look at probably the most famous event in the history of transsexuality in the United States - the operation by which George Jorgensen became Christine Jorgensen and made national headlines. 

2) Transfeminist Perspectives on History and Pedagogy, by Finn Enke (Process History, Sept. 2016) 

• An interview with Finn Enke about the field of Transgender studies and how a transfeminist approach can improve pedagogical practices. 

3) “Free Our Siblings, Free Ourselves:” Historicizing Trans Activism in the U.S., 1952–1992, by Abram Lewis (The American Historian, May 2019)

• This article gives a broad overview of the history of Trans Activism in the United States

The Field of Gender and Sexuality Studies 

1) The Sexuality Studies and Life of Alfred Kinsey, by James Jones (Talking History, 1998) 

2) About NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality, by OAH Blog Staff (Process History Blog, 2016) 

• An Interview with Gillian Frank about NOTCHES. NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality is a collaborative, international, and peer-reviewed blog established to encourage thinking expansively, accessibly, and publicly about the history of sexuality in the present and the past. Justin Bengry, Julia Laite, and Amy Murphy founded the blog in January 2014. Our goal is to act as a central hub for historians of sexuality and to open up capacious and engaged conversations that go beyond the boundaries of particular countries, time periods, and themes. 

3) Region, Space, and Place in Queer History, by Timothy Stewart-Winter (Process History Blog, 2017) 

• An analysis of the role of regional and local Queer Histories being essential to accurate historical narratives. “All of these stories offer a powerful challenge to the notion of highly visible urban gayborhoods as the natural template for LGBTQ life, defining our identities and aspirations. That idea itself, moreover, is of surprisingly recent vintage.” 

4) Carol and the Boundaries of Lesbian History, by Lauren Gutterman (Process History Blog, 2016) 

• An analysis of Carol and the accessibility of Lesbian history through popular culture. 

5)Everyone’s Queer, by Leila J. Rupp (Magazine of History, 2006) 

• A history of the fact that there is actually a Queer history and identity to be found in the archives - through a historiographical look at the field.