lgbt+ | History at Northampton

Senior lecturer Caroline Nielsen writes:

What sources are available for historians interested in historic LGBTQ+ experiences?

The answer is that there is a surprisingly large amount of materials now available to us. We just need to know where to look and how to access it. So, please allow me to introduce some excellent introductory resources, and some tips on using them. Most of these collections focus on late 19^th and early 20^th centuries collections. I’ve tried to provide links for all.

“Love” by Shaira Dela Peña

Primary Sources and Key Movements

Key national collections and research guides about LGBTQ+ activism in the UK include:

The National Archives UK Sexuality and Gender Identity History Research Guide: with links to key record series and search tips.

The Hall-Carpenter Archive (LSE): primary source collection relating to gay and lesbian rights and equalities movement.

British Library LGBTQ Histories: contains articles and information on British Library resources.

Bishopsgate Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive (LAGNA): an archive of news and media items about the LGBQT+ communities.

London Metropolitan Archive (LMA) LGBTQ+ collections

Wellcome Collection: museum, library and archive with multiple archival and digital collections on the history of medicine, health and society. Particularly relevant will be the sex and sexual health, sexology, and HIV/AIDS posters collection guides.

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Senior lecturer Caroline Nielsen writes:

Photo of rainbow hearts by Jiroe on Unsplash

Love is Love: Welcome to UK LBGTQ+ History Month!

February is UK LGBT+ History Month, an inclusive celebration of history.

Across the country, public events will be taking place to celebrate the long history and global diversity of LGBTQ+ experience. It aims to promote equality and diversity in communities, with a special emphasis on providing resources and support for LGBTQ+ people, young and old. It raises awareness of the diversity and complexity of human identity and relationships over time, highlighting the damaging effects of prejudice and discrimination. The theme for this year is poetry, prose and plays.

2019 marks the 14th anniversary of this public history event. It has certainly come a long way since 2005. The first LGBT+ History Month was faced with a number of tabloid news stories with barely disguised homophobia running through them (see the work of Robert Mills on this). LGBTQ+ history sometimes still suffers from a vague public misconception that it is an inappropriate form of biographic history which likes to ‘out’ historic individual’s intimate relationships and/or sexual preferences for either salacious entertainment or for political reasons. Discussing a historic person’s sexuality can still be controversial, especially if they were believed to have possibly been in a same-sex or ‘queer’ sexual or romantic relationship at some point in their lives. There has been debate about how appropriate it is to, in the words of one author, ‘open history’s closets’.[1] This view helped fuel another early misconception about the history of sexualities and LGBTQ+ experience; that it was just about what people historically liked to do with other people in bed.

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