Writing Queer History explores the remarkable and various ways in which historians and others have contended with the queer past. From the radical ferment of the 1960s and the emergence of lesbian and gay history, the book charts a course to the culture wars and queer history of our present day. How have LGBT and queer historians responded to their cultural and political contexts, to broader and shifting historical practices, and to queer and other theoretical perspectives? How have they navigated sources, fragments, gaps and silences? And what has their work revealed and achieved?
In this state-of-field guide, Matt Cook surveys research and writing from across the last 60 years by activist, community and academic historians, working within and beyond university settings, and across different disciplines and genres. He argues that queer history has been a connective, intersectional and boundary-crossing practice. At its best, it has illuminated broad social, cultural, political and historical dynamics, and multivalent ideas and experiences of desire, identity, and community.
Over five chapters, each with an autobiographical coda, the book shows how the personal is not only political but profoundly historical.
Matt Cook is Jonathan Cooper Chair of the History of Sexuality at Mansfield College, University of Oxford, and Co-Director of Oxford's Centre for Women's, Gender and Queer History.
Heiko Feldner is Senior Lecturer in Modern German History at Cardiff University, UK.
Heiko Feldner is co-director of the Centre for Ideology Critique and Žižek Studies at Cardiff University, UK. He is also the General Editor of Bloomsbury's Writing History series on historiography and historical theory, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, London. A former lecturer in the departments of political economy and history at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, he has written several books, including Zizek: Beyond Foucault (with F. Vighi, Palgrave 2007).
Kevin Passmore is Professor of History at Cardiff University, UK.
Stefan Berger is Professor of Social History and Director of the Institute of Social Movements and the House for the History of the Ruhr at the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany.
He is the author of numerous books, including
Nationalizing the Past (2015) and
Germany: Inventing the Nation (2004) and the editor of
A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Europe: 1789-1914 (2009). He is, along with Kevin Passmore and Heiko Feldner, one of the Series Editors for Bloomsbury's successful student book series,
Writing History.
Lizette Jacinto holds a BA in History from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico City, Mexico (2001), MA studies in History by the Institute f or Social Sciences and Humanities "Alfonso Vélez Pliego" (ICSyH) of the Benemeritus Autonomous University of Puebla (BUAP), Puebla, Mexico (2003), and the Dr.-Phil. degree in History from the Witten-Herdecke University, Witten, Germany (2010), obtained under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Jörn Rüsen, and in collaboration with the Institute for Advanced Cultural Studies (KWI), Essen , Germany. She has taught at the University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany, and the Heinrich-Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany, and has also been a guest lecturer at different universities in Europe and Latin America. Since 2015 she has been the lead trainer for Latin America of the research proposal writing courses Dies-ProGRANt, sponsored by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), Germany. Since December 2015 she is a full Research Professor of the Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities "Alfonso Vélez Pliego" (ICSyH) of the BUAP university in Puebla, Mexico. Since 2017 she is a member of the National System of Researchers, SNI Level I, in Mexico. She is currently a member of the Editorial Board of the journals Historia da Historiografía, Brazil, and the electronic journal iMex - México Interdisciplinario, of the University of Düsseldorf, Germany. Since 2020 she is Member of the Board of Advisors of Bloomsbury Publishers, England, for the collection Theory and Method. In 2022, she was the organizer of the IV Congress of the International Theory of History Network (INTH), held in Puebla, Mexico. She has coordinated the books Género y Ciencia, Editorial Velvuert, 2011, and Racismo, cuerpo y violencia en América Latina, BUAP-Ediciones del Lirio, 2019. Her lines of research are associated with Theory of History (microhistory, cultural history and conceptual history), Social Movements, Feminism, History of Mexico in XX-XXI centuries, as well as Mexico-German Relations, especially the German-speaking left-wing Exile in Mexico.