Gay Conversion Practices in Memoir, Film and Fiction: Stories of Repentance and Defiance

For over half a century, organizations and individuals promoting ex-gay, conversion and/ or reparative therapy have pushed the tenet that a person may be able to, and should, alter their sexual orientation. Their so-called treatments or therapies have taken various forms over the decades, ranging from medical (including psychiatric or psychological) rehabilitation approaches, to counselling, and religious healing. Gay Conversion Practices in Memoir, Film and Fiction provides an in-depth exploration of the disturbing phenomenon of gay conversion ‘therapy’ and its fictional and autobiographical representations across a broad range of films and books such as But I’m a Cheerleader! (1999), This is What Love in Action Looks Like (2011) and Boy Erased (2018). In doing so, the volume emphasizes the powerful role the arts and media play in communicating stories around conversion practices. Approaching the timely and urgent subject from an interdisciplinary perspective, contributors utilize film theory, queer theory, literary theory, mental health and social movement theory to discuss the medicalization and pathologizing of queer people, the power of institutions ranging from church, psychiatry and family (sometimes in alliance), and the real and fictional voices of survivors.

James Bennett is an Honorary Academic at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is author of 'Rats and Revolutionaries': The Labour Movement in Australia and New Zealand 1890-1940 (2004), co-author (with David Betts) of Marriage Equality and Resurgent Prejudice in Australia (2026) and co-editor (with Rebecca Beirne) of Making Film and Television Histories: Australia & New Zealand (2011). He is a specialist in the histories of medicalizing and de-medicalizing homosexuality.

Claire Nally is Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature in the Department of English Literature, Linguistics and Creative Writing at Northumbria University, UK. She is the author of Steampunk: Gender, Subculture and the Neo-Victorian (Bloomsbury, 2019), co-editor or Bloomsbury Library of Gender and Popular Culture and Deputy Editor (including reviews) of the open access journal C21 Literature.

Marguerite Johnson is Honorary Professor (Classics and Ancient History) at The University of Queensland. She is an interdisciplinary cultural historian of the ancient Mediterranean, and a comparative cultural analyst, emphasising literary-informed cultural paradigms, underpinned by the theoretical praxes of both gender and post-colonial theories. Her research explores themes in sexualities, gender, and the body, particularly the erotic poets Sappho, Catullus and Ovid, and myths and fables, Eros, and gender in the works of Plato. Key publications include Sexuality in Greek and Roman Literature and Society: A Sourcebook, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2022); as editor, Antipodean Antiquities: Classical Reception Down Under (Bloomsbury, 2019); Ovid on Cosmetics: Medicamina Faciei Femineae and Related Texts (Bloomsbury, 2016); as co-editor with Harold Tarrant, Alcibiades and the Socratic Lover-Educator (Duckworth, 2012).

Angela Smith is Professor of Language and Culture at the University of Sunderland, UK. She has written numerous articles and book chapters on media discourses, gender, the portrayal of immigrants and the representation of politicians.