Category:Historiography

Studying the History and Character of LGBTQ History

The historiography of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer history is the self-reflexive study of the processes by which knowledge of LGBTQ history is hypothesized and theorized, empirically researched, and analyzed, interpreted, written, cited, published, and received over time and in different societies.

The historiographer examines the history of LGBTQ history, and analyses the implications of naming and conceptualizing a specifically LGBTQ history, as opposed to, for example, a "homosexual" (and "heterosexual") history, a history of "same-sex (and different-sex) sexual relations," a history of "same-sex (and different-sex) love or "intimacy," or a history of "queer" (and "normal") sexuality.

The historiographer examines historians' explicit and implicit starting assumptions, and the implications of those assumptions for their work in LGBTQ history. The historiographer studies how a historian's definition -- in the present, at a specific point in time, in a particular society -- of a specific past object of study affects how that historian understands and presents her/his findings about the LGBTQ past.

The historiographer of LGBTQ history touches on such elements as authorship, sources, evidence, bias, perspective, interpretation, judgment, causation, style, and audience.

Interconnections in LGBTQ history among gender, race, class, ethnicity, religion, and politics have also been major areas of concern to historiographers, as have connections between the history of sexual and gender terminology and the social-historical organization of sexual and gender behaviors and identities.

Historiography is often broken down topically, such as the LGBTQ historiography of a particular nation state, for example, the history of LGBTQ life in the United States, or within the Islamic nations, or in China, or the historiography of particular cities or geographic regions. The rise of globalism and of newly perceived deep interconnections between countries and nations is leading to a new stress on international LGBTQ history.

Historiographers study different approaches or genres of history, such as LGBTQ economic history, oral history, political history, or social history. They analyze differences in history written for scholarly readers and popular history written for the general public. They study how history is presented in art, articles, books, movies, popular magazines, scholarly periodicals, on TV and most recently, on the Internet and in other new media.

Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, and the coming out of independent scholars and academy-based historians, a body of writing on on LGBTQ historiography has begun to emerge.^[1]

For specific problems in LGBTQ historiography, see the following list of stub articles. Please help OutHistory begin the process of filling them in these stub articles by starting to create a list of articles, books, films, and other works that touch on each of these subjects:

Alienation and Intimacy in LGBTQ History

Bisexual Historiography

Claiming in LGBTQ History (claiming the homosexuality of creative, famous, or "positive" figures)

Class in LGBTQ History

Ethnicity in LGBTQ History

Essentialism in LGBTQ History (see also Social Construction and LGBTQ History)

Evidence in LGBTQ and Heterosexual history

Gay Male Historiography

Gender in LGBTQ History

Heterosexual Historiography

Identity in LGBTQ History

Internationalism and Nationalism in LGBTQ History