New Directions in Queer Oral History Archives of Disruption

Foreword

Nan Alamilla Boyd

Introduction: Archives of Disruption

Amy Tooth Murphy, Emma Vickers, Clare Summerskill

Part 1: Narrating LGBTQ Histories: Presence, Absence, and the Space Between 

1. (Un)speakable Pasts: Reflections on Working at the Edges of Queer Oral History

Geraldine Fela

2.  Locating Lesbians, Finding “Gay Women,” Writing Queer Histories: Reflections on Oral Histories, Identity, and Community Memory

Valerie J. Korinek

3. Queer Intergenerational Reticence: A Religious Case Study

George J. Severs

4. Reading Both Ways: Lesbian Oral Histories and Bisexual Visibility

Lauren Jae Gutterman

5. Finding “Evidence of Me” Through “Evidence of Us”: Transgender Oral Histories and Personal Archives Speak

Noah Riseman

6. Destabilising Identities and Normative Narratives: The Methodological Challenges of Navigating Oral History Interviews with LGBTQ+ Children of Holocaust Survivors

Jacob Evoy

Part 2: Re/making Meaning: Navigating Discourse, Composure and Intersubjectivity

7. Beyond Composure and Discomposure in a Shifting Queer Identity Narrative

Victoria Golding

8. “Fuck the Gay Movement”: Dissemblance and Desire in a Black AIDS Oral History

Dan Royles

9. Unfinished Business: Documenting Australian Lesbian Feminism

Sophie Robinson

10. Bisexual Women’s Storytelling and Community-building in Toronto

Margaret Robinson

11. Filling the Boxes in Ourselves: Conducting a Queer Oral History of Bisexuality and Multiple-gender-attraction

Martha Robinson Rhodes

Part 3: Making a Queer Mess: Embodiment, Affect and Exceeding Our Limits

12. Towards a Queer-chronology: Telling Stories in the Queer/Ed Archives

Jamie A. Lee

13. “I Gotta Go”: Mobility as a Queer Methodology

Anne Balay

14. LGBTIQ Activism and “Insider” Interviewing: Reflecting on Oral Histories from the Campaign for Australian Marriage Equality

Shirleene Robinson

15. In Search of Queer Composure: Queer Temporality, Intimacy and Affect

Amy Tooth Murphy 

Part 4: Negotiating Identity: Sharing Authority in Creative Practice 

16. Dry Your Eyes, Princess: Oral Testimony and Photography – A Case Study

Emma Vickers

17. “It’s Telling Your Story to Your Family”: Why Positionality Matters When Interviewing an Older Lesbian for a Verbatim Play

Clare Summerskill

18. An Army of Listeners: Interviewing Lesbians as a Practice of Liberation for All

El Chenier

19. “Free to Be Me”: Oral History Research with Lesbians and Bisexual Women Seeking Asylum in the UK

Jane Traies

Biography

Clare Summerskill gained her doctorate from Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. Her research interests include the ethics of verbatim theatre processes and the role of the contributor in such productions. She works as a visiting lecturer at various UK universities and she is also a playwright, oral historian, and stand-up comedian.

Amy Tooth Murphy is a lecturer in oral history at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. Her research interests include British post-war lesbian history; oral history theory and method; butch/femme cultures and identities; and lesbian literature. Her current research project is an exploration of butch lived experience and identity from 1950 to present.

Emma Vickers is a senior lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK. She specialises in queer British history and is the author of Queen and Country: Same-sex Desire in the British Armed Forces, 1939–1945 (2013). She is interested in the intersection between psychotherapy and oral testimony.

"This is a terrific collection: an outstanding volume of unusual breadth and depth, in a rapidly expanding field of inquiry. With a compelling foreword by Nan Alamilla Boyd, contextualising introduction by three co-editors, and nineteen chapters drawn from diverse oral history projects with innovative methodologies, the book ranges geographically from the country to the city, across Australia, Canada, UK, and US. It engages an astounding array of narrators, from LGBTQ+ children of Holocaust survivors to straight and gay nurses navigating the early AIDS crisis, from intersex and marriage equality activists to trans military veterans. In addition to complex accounts of shame, job loss, reticence, and dissemblance, they tell unforgettable stories of lives lived loud, proud, and against the grain.

As gender and sexuality studies grows ever stronger and richer, these authors’ insights will guide students, inform colleagues, and empower community members for years to come. New Directions in Queer Oral History is an enormously important contribution to scholarship – and to queer cultures around the world."

John Howard, King’s College London, UK

"New Directions in Queer Oral History: Archives of Disruption reminds us why queer oral history is at the cutting edge of oral history practice and theory. Bringing together a diverse range of contributors working on lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer histories in a variety of national contexts, this rich collection provokes us to think again about our practice of oral history and both the limits and radical potential of the stories we generate. Raising difficult questions such as whether it is necessary, or indeed enough, for interviewers to share an LGBTQ+ identity with narrators; how intergenerational dynamics shape both the interview and our wider sense of community and self; and how we respond to the ethical dilemmas of probing traumatic histories, this lively and intimate collection shows how far queer oral history has come and points to the productive and disruptive possibilities of this fascinating field."

Rebecca Jennings, UCL, UK

"New Directions in Queer Oral History is a great book for anyone conducting research on queer oral history. It gives wonderful advice on how to plan and carry out successful oral history interviews. It also helps you to prepare for the interviews and the obstacles you might encounter while interviewing LGBTQ people. Reading about the difficulties and possibilities in queer oral history also gives the reader insight into how to analyze the interviews and how to find a new level of nuance in them. New Directions in Queer Oral History is also a book that I would have needed when I started planning my MA thesis on Finnish trans history. I’m delighted to have this book as a guide now, as I am starting to work on my PhD thesis." - Jean Lukkarinen , University of Turku