Locating Queer Histories: Places and Traces across the UK

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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.

Reviews

The theme of this book is that locality matters. Queer lives and queerscapes are illuminated across a multiplicity of places, spaces and times: from polities to gardens, synagogues, photography collections, racial interminglings, English beaches and Florence estates. Queerness is not so much about being as becoming, celebrating difference and belonging in all its varieties. * Jeffrey Weeks, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, London South Bank University, UK, Author of Between Worlds: A Queer Boy from the Valleys. *
Locating Queer Histories provides an exquisitely rich, wide-ranging sampler of queer experiences. Methodologically and geographically varied, this work delivers on the promise of queer urban, regional, and provincial histories to engage us in revisiting familiar places from new perspectives, communities long omitted from history. Locating Queer Histories is a welcome challenge to the field and a promise of more to come. * Valerie J. Korinek, A.S. Morton Professor of History, University of Saskatchewan, Canada *
This is another superlative offering from the 'Queer Beyond London' team of Bengry, Cook and Oram. The scholars they have assembled treat the reader to a rich diversity of topics about the fascinating heterogeneity of queer Britain. This is a collection to be savoured. * Brian Lewis, Professor of History, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. *

Author Bio

Matt Cook is Professor of Modern History at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. He is the author of Queer Domesticities: Homosexuality and Home Life in 20th-Century London (2014) and London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885-1914 (2003). Alison Oram is Professor of Social and Cultural History at Leeds Beckett University, UK. She is the author of Her Husband Was a Woman!: Women's Gender Crossing and Modern British Culture (2007) and the Lesbian History Sourcebook (2001). Justin Bengry is Lecturer in Queer History at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. His forthcoming monograph is entitled The Pink Pound: Capitalism and Homosexuality in 20th-Century Britain.