Abstract
This study examines commonalities in English-language texts dealing with queer history before 1969. The goal of this research is to expand the field of queer historiography by understanding what stories and methodologies preceded more modern histories, and especially to understand what existed before the narrative of an upward arc from the flashpoint of the Stonewall Uprisings. Material surveyed includes magazines, poetry, sexology books, novels, diaries, pamphlets, newspaper articles, and academic papers in order to collect items that are often overlooked in timelines of queer politics and culture. These materials are brought into conversation with extant historiographical theory to discuss how historiography and queer theory may benefit each other.
Evidence is grouped under three major themes: absence, gay lists, and mythology. Each subject chapter is expanded using examples of representational materials. Absence recognizes that queer history’s lack of institutions and generational transmission repeatedly create silence and gaps over time, and examines how these silences may exist as sites of potential. The chapter on gay lists analyzes over time the phenomenon of creating lists of names of famous queer people as a manifestation of revisionist/reparative history. Mythology explores the deployment of legend and antiquity by queer voices for political and emotional purposes. The primary ideological focus of this study is historical exploration as an expression of desire.