NOTCHES on the Bookshelf

Urning: Queer Identity in the German Nineteenth Century

By Douglas Pretsell NOTCHES on the Bookshelf

Douglas Pretsell Urning is a biography of the earliest recognisably modern sexual identity. The urning identity was, in fact, the dominant male same-sex sexual identity in the German speaking world between 1864 and 1897 but was subsequently eclipsed by terminologies such as homosexual, gay, or queer. NOTCHES: What drew you […]

Race, Sexuality and Identity in Britain and Jamaica: The Biography of Patrick Nelson, 1916-1963

By Gemma Romain LGBTQ, NOTCHES on the Bookshelf, Race and Ethnicity, United Kingdom

Patrick Nelson: queer black Jamaican man, queer black migrant in interwar London, WWII serviceman, POW and witness to Jamaican histories of colonialism and decolonization.

The Bars Are Ours: Histories and Cultures of Gay Bars in America, 1960 and After

By Lucas Hilderbrand Gay nightlife, LGBTQ, NOTCHES on the Bookshelf

The Bars Are Ours is the first nationwide history of gay bars in America during the period of gay liberation and after. 

In a Rapture of Distress: Women’s Sexuality and Modern India

By Amrita Narayanan Asian Sexualities, NOTCHES on the Bookshelf

How do we think about sexual freedom in a way that is capacious enough to include countries that have not had a sexual revolution?

Family Matters: Queer Households and the Half-Century Struggle for Legal Recognition

By Marie-Amélie George 20th and 21st Century United States, LGBTQ, NOTCHES on the Bookshelf

Family Matters offers a new way of understanding how beleaguered minority groups may be able to secure meaningful legal change.

Slapping Leather: Queer Cowfolx at the Gay Rodeo

By Elyssa Ford 20th and 21st Century United States, LGBTQ, NOTCHES on the Bookshelf

Slapping Leather traces gay rodeo as a space where queer people have been able to both embrace and challenge the idealized masculinity associated with the iconic cowboy of the American West.

A Queer New York: Geographies of Lesbians, Dykes, and Queers

By Jen Jack Gieseking 20th and 21st Century United States, LGBTQ, NOTCHES on the Bookshelf

A Queer New York traces the gentrification of and by lesbian and queer people from the early days of the AIDS crisis to the last season of The L Word.