Emma Vickers

Amy Tooth Murphy

Clare Summerskill

This comprehensive international collection reflects on the practice, purpose, and functionality of queer oral history, and in doing so demonstrates the vibrancy and innovation of this rapidly evolving field. Drawing on the roots of oral history’s original commitment to "history from below" queer oral history has become an indispensable methodology at the heart of queer studies. Expanding and extending the existing canon, this book offers up key observations about queer oral history as a methodology, and how it might be advanced through cutting edge approaches. The collection contains a mix of contributions from established scholars, early career researchers, postgraduate students, archivists, and activists, ensuring its accessibility and wide appeal. The go-to reference for queer oral history for scholars, undergraduate and postgraduate students, and community-engaged practitioners, New Directions in Queer Oral History advances rigorous methodological and theoretical debates and constitutes a significant intervention in the world of oral history.

Archives of Disruption

New Directions in Queer Oral History

The first study of its kind in the UK, Queen and country examines the complex intersection between same-sex desire and the British Armed Forces during the Second World War. It illuminates how men and women lived, loved and survived in an institution which, at least publicly, was unequivocally hostile towards same-sex activity within its ranks. Queen and country also tells a story of selective remembrance and the politics of memory, exploring specifically why same-sex desire continues to be absent from the historical record of the war. In examining this absence, and the more intimate minutiae of cohesion, homosociability and desire, this study pushes far beyond traditional military history in order to cast new light on one of the most widely discussed conflicts of the twentieth century.

Emma Vickers

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