Kit Heyam

A New History of Gender

Before We Were Trans

Valerie Traub

Michael Bronski

Melissa Martin

Marcus Velke-Schmidt

Abigail Mitchell

Jon Astbury

Hannah Ayres

Nick Cherryman

Big Ideas - einfach erklärt. Geballtes Wissen über die Geschichte von LGBTQIA*-Menschen, ihre Kultur, wichtige Ereignisse und Meilensteine

Big Ideas. Das LGBTQIA*-Buch

Discover the rich and complex history of LGBTQ+ people around the world - their struggles, triumphs, and cultural contributions. Exploring and explaining the most important ideas and events in LGBTQ+ history and culture, this book showcases the breadth of the LGBTQ+ experience. This diverse, global account explores the most important moments, movements, and phenomena, from the first known lesbian love poetry of Sappho to Kinsey's modern sexuality studies, and features biographies of key figures from Anne Lister to Audre Lorde. The LGBTQ+ History Book celebrates the victories and untold triumphs of LGBTQ+ people throughout history, such as the Stonewall Riots and first gender affirmation surgeries, as well as commemorating moments of tragedy and persecution, from the Renaissance Italian "Night Police" to the 20th century "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy. The book also includes major cultural cornerstones - the secret language of polari, Black and Latine ballroom culture, and the many flags of the community - and the history of LGBTQ+ spaces, from 18th-century "molly houses" to modern "gaybourhoods". Using the "Big Ideas" series' trademark combination of authoritative, accessible text and bold graphics, The LGBTQ+ History Book celebrates the long, proud - and often hidden - history of LGBTQ+ people, cultures, and places from around the world.

Big Ideas Simply Explained

The LGBTQ + History Book

Jon Ward

This open access book features a diverse collective of arts and humanities researchers, educators and creative practitioners, sharing their thoughts and experiences of how to approach gender nonconformity creatively and ethically, including from a decolonial perspective. While substantial work has addressed the ethics and practicalities of working with trans and gender-nonconforming participants in social science research, approaches to gender nonconformity in arts and humanities research, teaching and practice still remain underexplored. Here, contributors share their thoughts and experience on topics including centring trans people and people of colour in fan adaptations of Les Misérables; moving beyond medicalised approaches to trans history; responding to the early modern history of gender nonconformity through poetic-performative closet dramas; and using trans history to decolonise history teaching. The editors' draw out the book's practical and theoretical implications, reflecting on what it means for marginalised people to 'forge a home' within the arts and humanities in our contemporary political moment. This book is an invaluable resource for academics, educators, performers and activists invested in finding new, trans-affirming, decolonial and anti-racist ways to engage with gender nonconformity in their work. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Bloomsbury Open Collections Library Collective.

Forging A Home For Ourselves

New and Decolonial Approaches to Gender Nonconformity

During his lifetime and the four centuries following his death, King Edward II (1307-1327) acquired a reputation for having engaged in sexual and romantic relationships with his male favourites, and having been murdered by penetration with a red-hot spit. This book provides the first account of how this reputation developed, providing new insights into the processes and priorities that shaped narratives of sexual transgression in medieval and early modern England. In doing so, it analyses the changing vocabulary of sexual transgression in English, Latin and French; the conditions that created space for sympathetic depictions of same-sex love; and the use of medieval history in early modern political polemic. It also focuses, in particular, on the cultural impact of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II(c.1591-92). Through such close readings of poetry and drama, alongside chronicle accounts and political pamphlets, it demonstrates that Edward's medieval and early modern afterlife was significantly shaped by the influence of literary texts and techniques. A 'literary transformation' of historiographical methodology is, it argues, an apposite response to the factors that shaped medieval and early modern narratives of the past.

A Literary Transformation of History

The Reputation of Edward II, 1305-1697

'A beautiful, brilliant, lively book that weaves together fascinating and moving examples with thoughtful analysis. Both heartfelt and rigorous, entertaining and scholarly, Before We Were Trans invites us to expand our sense of communities - past and present - in welcoming ways, rather than contracting them and policing their borders' MEG-JOHN BARKER, author of Gender: A Graphic Guide 'Celebrates trans history, whilst acknowledging the reality of what it means to live within our community with joy and kindness. In-depth research and personal stories tie Before We Were Trans up into a true treat for the mind' JAMIE WINDUST, author of In Their Shoes Across the world today, people of all ages are doing fascinating, creative, messy things with gender. These people have a rich history - but one that is often left behind by narratives of trans lives that focus on people with stable, binary, uncomplicated gender identities. As a result, these stories tend to be recent, binary, stereotyped, medicalised and white. Before We Were Trans is a new and different story of gender, that seeks not to be comprehensive or definitive, but - by blending culture, feminism and politics - to widen the scope of what we think of as trans history by telling the stories of people across the globe whose experience of gender has been transgressive, or not characterised by stability or binary categories. Transporting us from Renaissance Venice to seventeenth-century Angola, from Edo Japan to North America, the stories this book tells leave questions and resist conclusions. They are fraught with ambiguity, and defy modern Western terminology and categories - not least the category of 'trans' itself. But telling them provides a history that reflects the richness of modern trans reality more closely than any previously written. Before We Were Trans is a history and celebration of gender in all its fluidity, ambiguity and complexity.

Kit Heyam

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