Abstract
This session explores different theoretical and methodological approaches to doing gender and sexuality history when working with historical archives.
With a focus on the early twentieth century, we attempt to analyse what today could be termed ‘queer lives’ and ‘queer relationships’. We are interested in discussing how we can bring out stories about gender and sexuality from archives, especially in situations where ‘queerness’ and ‘same-sex relations’ might only be indirectly mentioned. How can we develop reading practices and archival approaches that enable historians to uncover otherwise silenced, marginalized and subaltern voices from the archives? How can we respect and honour past lives while (also) aiming at providing new insights into past gendered lives and intimate experiences? How can we revitalise ‘queer pasts’, when the terms such as ‘queer’, ‘transgender’, ‘lesbian’ did not exist in the periods we are analysing?
The session consists of the gender historians Rikke Andreassen (Denmark), Íris Ellenberger (Iceland), and Niels Nyegaard (Norway/Denmark). Jointly, they will present and discuss different theoretical and methodological approaches that might contribute with novel insights into past queer lives, as well as present papers that provide empirical examples on how we might produce new knowledges about queer, gender and sexuality history from the Nordic region.
Organizers
Rikke Andreassen is professor at the Department of Arts and Communication, Roskilde University, Denmark. Her research is interdisciplinary and intersectional with a strong focus on gender, sexuality and race. It draws upon theories and methodology from the fields of gender studies, queer studies, critical race and whiteness studies, media studies and history. Empirically, she often focuses on contemporary phenomena, such as online media or assisted reproduction, while always placing such phenomena in historical context. She is not interested in a particular phenomenon or technology per se but rather in the ways that they can challenge or reinforce power structures and processes of inclusion and exclusion. She is the author of Mediated Kinship. Gender, race and sexuality in donor families (2019) and Human Exhibitions: Race, gender and sexuality in ethnic displays (2015). She is the P1 of the research project ‘New stories of female same-sex relations 1880-2020’, running from 2022-2024.
Íris Ellenberger is an Icelandic historian and an associate professor at the School of Education, University of Iceland. Her main research interests include migration, queer and gender history. She has recently worked on the project Hidden Women: Women and queer sexualities in Icelandic sources 1700–1960 with Ásta Kristín Benediktsdóttir and Hafdís Erla Hafsteinsdóttir and is currently the PI of two queer history projects: From Sexual Outlaws to Model Citizens and Queering National Histories. Her recent publications include work on women's queer sexualities in Icelandic sources in the 18th and 19th centuries (with Hafdís Erla Hafsteinsdóttir) and the intersections of the Icelandic women's movement, the Reykjavík Women's School and same-sex attraction. She is currently working on an article on the depictions and roles of gay men in Icelandic women's magazines from 1990 to 2010 (with Þorsteinn Vilhjálmsson).
Niels Nyegaard is a Danish gender historian whose research interest include gender and sexuality history, questions of sexual citizenship and queer theory. He primarily specializes in male queer history during the 19th and 20th centuries. Nyegaard holds a PhD from Aarhus University (2018) and is currently employed as a postdoc at STK, University of Oslo. He currently works on a project that explores the male homosexual closet’s history and cultural effects in the early Danish welfare state. His recent publications include the book Den store homoskandale (2021).