LGBTQA+ History Month Resources
Learn more about LGBTQA+ History
LGBTQA+ History Month gives us all the opportunity to learn and educate each other about the wonderful contributions that LGBTQA+ people have made throughout time and space.
British Library
Visit The British Library's LGBTQ Histories collection. From the 1500s to today, this site charts the struggles for love, identity and legislative change faced by LGBTQ communities in the UK.
- British Library: A short history of LGBT+ rights in the UK
- British Library: Queer in the city: London's history
- British Library: Transgender identities in the past
English Heritage
Find out more about the lives of England’s LGBTQ people and their important place in the stories of English Heritage sites, LGBTQ+ History.
Historic England
Look at Historic England's Pride of Place map - Queer heritage is everywhere. What we today call Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer (LGBTQ) histories are embedded in the buildings and landscapes all around us. Pride of Place uncovers and celebrates places of LGBTQ heritage across England, ranging from the frontiers of Roman Britain to the gay pubs and clubs that remain important in our lives today. A largely crowd-sourced map of LGBT+ history, including a number of sites in Mile End, Stepney Green and across the UK.
Bishopsgate Institute
The Bishopsgate Institute is home to a huge range of LGBT+ resources, including thousands of journals, books, banners, badges, t-shirts, memorabilia, oral histories, written personal accounts, private papers, reports, postcards, posters, press clippings, photographs and more on individuals and organisations important to understanding and celebrating LGBT+ history, politics and culture. The collections include the archives of organisations such as Stonewall, Switchboard and Outrage!. Access the catalogue and find out more about this incredible repository of LGBT+ history.
Reading List
Below is a list of recommended resources/reading for those interested in learning more about LGBTQA+ identities and experiences both in the UK and internationally. Thanks to colleagues from Queen Mary’s School of History for putting together this list.
Work by Queen Mary academics
- QM Professor Julian Jackson’s book, Living in Arcadia: Homosexuality, Politics and Morality in France from the Liberation to AIDS (Chicago, 2009)
- QM Professor Thomas Dixon’s BBC Radio 4 series on the History of Friendship, which included an episode ‘Comrades and Lovers’ on Platonic friendships and homosexual love in Victorian Britain
Articles
- Ashley Currier, ‘Political Homophobia in Postcolonial Namibia,’ Gender and Society, 24, 1, (2010), 110-129.
- Craig Griffiths, ‘Sex, Shame and West German Gay Liberation’, German History 34:3 (2016), 445-67.
- Craig Griffiths, ‘Gay Activism in Modell Deutschland’, European Review of History 22:1 (2014), 60-76.
- Derek Krueger, ‘Homoerotic Spectacle and the Monastic Body in Symeon the New Theologian’ in Virginia Burrus and Catherine Keller (eds.), Toward a Theology of Eros: Transfiguring Passion at the Limits of Discipline (New York: Fordhan, 2006), 99-118.
- Sahar Amer, ‘Medieval Arab Lesbians and Lesbian-Like Women’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 18:2 (2009), 215-236.
Books
- Craig Griffiths, The Ambivalence of Gay Liberation: Male Homosexual Politics in 1970s West Germany (Oxford, 2021)
- Dan Healey, Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent (University of Chicago Press, 2001)
- Dan Healey, Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi (Bloomsbury, 2017)
- John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (1980)
- John Boswell, Rediscovering Gay History: Archetypes of Gay Love in Christian History (1982)
- John Boswell, Homosexuality in the Priesthood and the Religious Life (1991) (co-author)
- John Boswell, Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe (1994)
- Marc Epprecht, Heterosexual Africa? The History of an Idea from the Age of Exploration to the Age of AIDS (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008)
- Marc Epprecht, Hungochani: The History of a Dissident Sexuality in Southern Africa (London: McGill-Queen’s Press, 2004)
- Marc Epprecht, Sexuality and Social Justice in Africa: Rethinking Homophobia and Forging Resistance (London: Zed Books, 2013)
- Marc Epprecht, ed., Unspoken Facts: A History of Homosexualities in Africa (Ann Arbour: African Books Collective, 2008)
- Robert Lorway, Namibia’s Rainbow Project: Gay Rights in an African Nation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), 1-14.