Charles Upchurch What does a historian of sexuality do when confronted with something that looks compellingly modern, but decades before it was supposed to exist? Specifically, I mean evidence of identity and political activism built around a positive interpretation of same-sex desire in the 1820s. The evidence, although fragmentary and […]
United Kingdom
Rainbow Plaques: Mapping York’s LGBT History
Kit Heyam There are over 70 plaques in York, marking historically significant places from a Roman fortress (Bootham) to a minuscule street (Whip-ma-whop-ma-gate). While the original “blue plaque” scheme was started by English Heritage, any group may erect a plaque, marking spaces linked to people or events they consider worthy […]
Sexuality, Family Planning, and the British Left: An Interview with Stephen Brooke
Interview by David Minto A sweeping account of sexuality and socialism in twentieth century Britain, Stephen Brooke’s Sexual Politics has the feel of a traditional political history even as it foregrounds a subject still too often ignored in the analysis of political modernity. Demonstrating how leftist organizing shaped national battles over abortion, […]
Queer Domesticities: Matt Cook on Home Life, Family and Community in London
Interview by Justin Bengry In Queer Domesticities: Homosexuality and Home Life in Twentieth-Century London (Palgrave, 2014), Matt Cook explores queer men’s experiences of home and homemaking in the metropolis. Peering into bedsits in Notting Hill and squats in Brixton, as well as luxurious abodes in the city’s more affluent districts, Cook offers a queer history nuanced […]
Jeffrey Weeks reflects on "Sexual Politics in the Era of Reagan and Thatcher"
Jeffrey Weeks Editor’s note: In this special guest post, Jeffrey Weeks reflects on his 1988 interview with Marc Stein, which appeared in its entirety for the first time on NOTCHES as “Sexual Politics in the Era of Reagan and Thatcher.” Framing this 1988 interview were two important political contexts: Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government had passed Section […]
Sexual Politics in the Era of Reagan and Thatcher: Marc Stein in Conversation with Jeffrey Weeks
Interview by Marc Stein In May 1988, when I was working as the coordinating editor of Gay Community News in Boston, Massachusetts, I interviewed Jeffrey Weeks, the influential British sociologist and historian who had written Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (1977), Sex, Politics, […]
Challenging Heterosexism: The Haringey Experiment, 1986-1987
Bob Cant Who is going to take responsibility for researching the sexual politics of Haringey in the 1980s? Haringey is a multicultural North London borough with a population of around a quarter of a million, and major economic contrasts between different localities; it includes Broadwater Farm estate, which was the scene of […]
