LGBT+ History Month 2021 Reading List

Posted by Rebecca Mortimer - Monday, 15 Feb 2021

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LGBT+ History month takes place every February in the UK and this year’s theme is Mind, Body and Spirit.

‘The overall aim of LGBT+ History month is to promote equality and diversity for the benefit of the public.’

 

 

To celebrate, we have put together a reading list of new, forthcoming and bestselling LGBT+ titles, all with a 50% off discount. Simply add LGBT50 at the checkout before the 1st March 2021.*

 


 

Horizontal together, by Paisid Aramphongphan

Horizontal together tells the story of 1960s art and queer culture in New York through the overlapping circles of Andy Warhol, underground filmmaker Jack Smith and experimental dance star Fred Herko. Taking a pioneering approach to this intersecting cultural milieu, the book uses a unique methodology that draws on queer theory, dance studies and the analysis of movement, deportment and gesture to look anew at familiar artists and artworks, but also to bring to light queer artistic figures’ key cultural contributions to the 1960s New York art world.

The history of marriage equality in Ireland, by Sonja Tiernan

Utilising published reports, newspaper articles, marriage equality papers and extracts from Dáil debates, this book traces the key legislative and social changes surrounding Irish marriage equality, from the establishment of the advocacy group in 2008 to the referendum on the extension of civil marriage rights to same-sex couples in Ireland in 2015. With a foreword by Ivana Bacik, a Senator and Reid Professor of Criminal Law, Criminology and Penology at Trinity College Dublin, best known for her tireless work defending human rights, this book offers a concise historical record of the momentous referendum on marriage equality.

Queer exceptions, by Stephen Greer

Queer exceptions is a study of contemporary solo performance in the UK and Western Europe that explores the contentious relationship between identity, individuality and neoliberalism. With diverse case studies featuring the work of La Ribot, David Hoyle, Oreet Ashery, Bridget Christie, Tanja Ostojic, Adrian Howells and Nassim Soleimanpour, the book examines the role of singular or ‘exceptional’ subjects in constructing and challenging assumed notions of communal sociability and togetherness, while drawing fresh insight from the fields of sociology, gender studies and political philosophy to reconsider theatre’s attachment to singular lives and experiences.

Regulating homosexuality in Soviet Russia, 1956–91, by Rustam Alexander

This ground-breaking book challenges the widespread view that sex and homosexuality were unmentionable in the USSR. The Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras (1956-82) have remained obscure and unexplored from this perspective. Drawing on previously undiscovered sources, Alexander fills in this critical gap.

Bound together, by Andy Campbell

What are the archives of gay and lesbian leather histories, and how have contemporary artists mined these archives to create a queer politics of the present? This book sheds light on an area long ignored by traditional art history and LGBTQ studies, examining the legacies of the visual and material cultures of US leather communities.

‘Curing queers’ by Tommy Dickinson

Drawing on a rich array of source materials including previously unseen, fascinating (and often quite moving) oral histories, archival and news media sources, ‘Curing queers’ examines the plight of men who were institutionalised in British mental hospitals to receive ‘treatment’ for homosexuality and transvestism, and the perceptions and actions of the men and women who nursed them. It examines why the majority of the nurses followed orders in administering the treatment – in spite of the zero success-rate in ‘straightening out’ queer men – but also why a small number surreptitiously defied their superiors by engaging in fascinating subversive behaviours.

Alan Hollinghurst, edited by Michele Mendelssohn and Denis Flannery

This groundbreaking, cross-generic collection is the first to consider the entire breadth of Alan Hollinghurst’s Booker Prize-winning writing. Focused through the concept of influence, the volume addresses critical issues surrounding the work of Britain’s most important contemporary novelist. It encompasses provocative and timely subjects ranging from gay visual cultures and representations, to Victorian, modernist and contemporary literature, as well as race and empire, theatre and cinema, eros and economics. The book reveals the fascinating intellectual and affective matter that lies beneath the polished control and dazzling style of Hollinghurst’s work.

Sex in the archives by Barry Reay

The archive has assumed a new significance in the history of sex, and this book visits a series of such archives, including the Kinsey Institute’s erotic art; gay masturbatory journals in the New York Public Library; the private archive of an amateur pornographer; and one man’s lifetime photographic dossier on Baltimore hustlers. Shedding new light on American sexual history, the topics covered are both fascinating and wide-ranging: the art history of homoeroticism; casual sex before hooking-up; transgender; New York queer sex; masturbation; pornography; sex in the city.

Queer Muslim diasporas in contemporary literature and film by Alberto Fernández Carbajal

This book explores the representation of queer migrant Muslims in international literature and film from the 1980s to the present day. Bringing together a variety of contemporary writers and filmmakers of Muslim heritage engaged in vindicating same-sex desire, the book approaches queer Muslims in the diaspora as figures forced to negotiate their identities according to the expectations of the West and of their migrant Muslim communities. The book examines 3 main themes: the depiction of queer desire across racial and national borders, the negotiation of Islamic femininities and masculinities, and the positioning of the queer Muslim self in time and place.

 

*Discount not valid with any other offer.

 

 

 

 

 

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