Fall 2016  Vol. 30:2  http://www.clgbthistory.org

combat against people of color, IN THIS ISSUE women, undocumented immigrants, trans and genderqueer folks, Muslims, and those who Co-Chairs’ Column 1 reject—or are rejected by—mainstream LGBTQ America Today 2 “respectability.” Indeed, that Trump has so Members’ Announcements 4 quickly countenanced same-sex marriage should AHA Sessions 6 tell us something about just which gays have Book Reviews 9 always been seen as most acceptable in the first place. And while Trump may see same-sex Reviews in this issue marriage as constitutionally protected, Mike Nicole Albert, Decadence Pence clearly does not, and future Supreme Gretchen Schultz, Sapphic Fathers Marlon M. Bailey, Butch Queens Up in Pumps Court nominees also may not. Our times require Ben Eshleman, Jess Wiltey, Charlie Backus, and us to be vigilant, organized, and tireless in Maxwell Harvey-Sampson, Trans Rochester Speaks fighting for the rights and indeed the lives of Susan C. Seymour, Cora Du Bois people and other targeted communities. Jennifer Tyburczy, Sex Museums This year’s annual meeting of the American Committee on LGBT History Historical Association gives us an opportunity to Co-chairs: Amanda Littauer and Nick Syrett come together in support of one another and of Book Review Editor: Dan Royles the vital work we do to educate students across Newsletter Editor: April Haynes the country about our vibrant queer past. This year at the AHA, we can roughly divide our CO-CHAIRS’ COLUMN panels into three groups. As bookends for the Fall 2016 entire conference, we organized two panels on teaching survey courses: one on the Latin American survey, the first session of the AHA; It is with heavy hearts that we write this column and one on the U.S. surveys, the last session. a month after the election of Donald Trump and Please encourage your colleagues who do not many other Republicans, all on a platform of already teach or study queer history to attend misogyny, racism, , , these sessions where panelists will share a and xenophobia. While as of this writing Trump variety of easy-to-incorporate resources, events, has publicly referred to marriage equality as subjects, and themes. “settled law,” as we must not be complacent: marriage equality may protect the On Thursday we are putting on a panel exploring most privileged among us, but it does little to the experience of queer historians—those who

CLBTH Fall 2016 1 do and do not study queer history—on the job In the weeks to come, look out for further market. It will feature the experiences of those in announcements about the theme of next year’s history departments, as well as ethnic studies CLGBTH-sponsored sessions, when the annual and women’s studies, and those who found meeting returns to Washington, D.C. You should careers outside of traditional academia. already have received an email from Treasurer Following last year’s successful session on Rebecca Davis asking you to renew your publishing in queer history, we are hoping that membership or, if you are a lifetime member this session will meet the needs of members who already, make a contribution. Online dues are interested in professional development payment is remarkably easy, and remains as through a queer lens. To that end, we are affordable as ever, so we encourage you to delighted to continue our mentorship program, renew as soon as you are able. directed by CLGBTH board member Cookie Woolner. If you are interested in participating— In the meantime, however, we wish everyone a as a mentee or mentor—please email Cookie at productive end-of-semester and a wonderful [email protected]. We’re also excited to winter holiday. We look forward to seeing you in include a tour in the local arrangements Denver! program: interested participants will receive an introduction to queer-themed archives and the In solidarity, Colorado LGBT History Project at the Denver Amanda & Nick Public Library with archivist Jim Kroll. That takes place on Saturday afternoon at 2pm and those interested must sign up during the AHA LGBTQ America Today registration process.

Thanks to the leadership of board members The United States National Park Service has Emily Hobson and Stephen Vider, we have three just released a groundbreaking new publication panels honoring the life and work of queer on LGBTQ history, LGBTQ America Today: A Latino oral historian Horacio N. Roque Ramírez, Theme Study of Lesbian, , Bisexual, who died just prior to last year’s AHA. Those and Queer History. This sessions will take place on monumental work, with 32 chapters contributed Friday. On Saturday we offer up a slate of panels by 27 historians, is the first assessment of queer on queering historical scale, the place-based history and historic preservation overall theme of the conference. Finally, we sponsored by a national government anywhere cosponsored a panel on the California FAIR Act, in the world. It provides an overview of key featuring former co-chair Don Romesburg. A themes in U.S. queer history; a framework to complete lineup of all panels can be found later assist preservation advocates in identifying, in the newsletter and on our website. interpreting and preserving LGBTQ places; and a resource for supporting nomination of sites for Of course the CLGBTH AHA would not be itself National Register and National Landmark status. without some social gatherings. On Friday night Authors and peer reviewers included many we are delighted to be joining the newly CLGBTH members. Member Gerard Koskovich’s constituted AHA Committee on LGBTQ Status in chapter is entitled, "The History of Queer the Profession for its first annual reception. History: One Hundred Years of the Search for a There we will give out two prizes: the John Shared Heritage.” Boswell Prize for best book in queer history and the Joan Nestle prize for best undergraduate The Department of the Interior announced the paper. On Saturday night Nick will host CLGBTH publication of LGBTQ America Today with the members and friends at a party at his house, following press release: about a ten-minute cab ride from the conference headquarters. Further details to come via email. CLBTH Fall 2016 2 WASHINGTON, October 11, 2016 – U.S. Secretary inform the presentation of LGBTQ history by of the Interior Sally Jewell today joined National professors and teachers, and will serve as a Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis and Tim reference for the general public. Gill, philanthropist and founder of the Gill Foundation to announce the release of a new “In 2016 the National Park Service is marking National Park Service theme study identifying our centennial anniversary and the upcoming places and events associated with the history of 50th anniversary of the National Historic lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer- Preservation Act on October 15 with a renewed identified Americans. The release of the theme commitment to share a more complete history of study coincides with National Day, a our nation with the next generation of commemoration first celebrated in 1988 on the Americans,” said National Park Service Director anniversary of the first March on Washington for Jonathan B. Jarvis. “Through heritage initiatives Lesbian and Gay Rights. like the LGBTQ theme study, the National Park Service is commemorating the inspiring stories LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, of minorities and women who have made Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History” is the significant contributions to our nation’s history first of its kind study conducted by a national and culture.” Secretary Jewell announced plans government to chronicle historical places, for the theme study in 2014 at an event outside documents, people and events that shaped the the Stonewall Inn in New York City alongside LGBTQ civil rights movement in America. The National Park Service leadership and Tim Gill. National Park Service (NPS) coordinated the Experts in LGBTQ studies wrote and peer-edited study with support from the National Park over 1,200 pages of the theme study. Chapters Foundation and funding from the Gill chart LGBTQ histories across the United States— Foundation as part of a broader initiative under from the native māhū of Hawai’i and lhamana of the Obama Administration to ensure that the the Zuni, to the drag queens of the Stonewall NPS reflects and tells a more complete story of Uprising, from private residences, hotels, bars, the people and events responsible for building and government agencies to hospitals, parks and this nation. community centers. Authors and peer reviewers included professors, filmmakers, historians, “For far too long, the struggles and contributions geographers, archivists and museum curators, of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer- researchers, experts in historic preservation, identified Americans have been ignored in the historical archaeologists, journalists and traditional narratives of our nation’s history,” members of the clergy. said Secretary Jewell. “This theme study is the first of its kind by any national government to “LGBT history is American history and as we identify this part of our shared history, and it will celebrate the Centennial anniversary of the result in an important step forward in reversing National Park Service, I can think of no better the current underrepresentation of stories and time to advocate for a more accurate and places associated to the LGBTQ community in inclusive view of the American experience,” said the complex and diverse story of America." Tim Gill, founder of the Gill Foundation. The theme study is a pivotal moment for the LGBTQ community as it establishes, for the first “Thanks to the generous support of Tim Gill and time, a framework for inclusion and recognition the Gill Foundation, this important study was of places associated with people and events that possible,” said Will Shafroth, president of the made LGBTQ history and left a mark on National Park Foundation, the official charity of American history. The theme study provides the America’s national parks. "This work helps big picture that will help these important places expand the scope of the history preserved within to be considered for designation as National our National Park System and honor an America Historic Landmarks or nominated to the National that represents us all.” Register of Historic Places. It will also guide and CLBTH Fall 2016 3 Earlier this year Secretary Jewell and Director by the National Park Service. Other studies have Jarvis returned to New York City to participate in examined or are studying the contributions of a public dedication ceremony following women, Latino Americans, and Asian Americans President Obama’s designation of the Stonewall and Pacific Islanders. Previous studies on National Monument, the nation’s first monument African-Americans and American Indians were to honor the story of LGBTQ Americans, on June completed in 2003 and 1990 respectively. 24, 2016.

In addition to the Stonewall National Monument, Members’ Announcements the Obama Administration recognized the Henry Gerber House in Chicago as a National Historic Landmark, and designated eight other LGBTQ Ian Lekus, Amnesty International’s LGBT sites on the National Register of Historic Places. specialist, will launch a new podcast in January. These include: Radio Free Qtopia is dedicated to boosting the signal for & preserving the voices of some  The Furies Collective House in amazing activists, artists, educators, & other Washington, D.C. – May 2, 2016 people doing brave, creative work in unexpected  Edificio Comunidad de Orgullo Gay de & even dangerous places to make the world Puerto Rico (commonly known as Casa more queer inclusive & affirming. Ian writes, Orgullo or Pride House) in San Juan, “Now more than ever, we need better stories and Puerto Rico – May 1, 2016 we need to change the narrative. If we ever  Julius’ Bar in New York, NY – April 20, sought evidence that we make decisions based 2016 on stories — and that even false stories have  Bayard Rustin Residence in New York, NY extraordinary power — we now have all we ever – March 8, 2016 need. I hope you’ll consider supporting this  Cherry Grove Community House & project. Please also follow Radio Free Qtopia on Theater in Cherry Grove, NY – June 4, Facebook and Twitter (@radiofreeqtopia) and 2014 share news of this podcast.”  Carrington House in Fire Island Pines, NY – January 8, 2014 OutHistory has launched a major new archive  James Merrill House in Stonington, CT – and exhibit, “U.S. Internationalism.” It August 28, 2013 features more than 1000 LGBT magazine items  Dr. Franklin E. Kameny Residence in from the 1950s and 1960s that referenced Africa, Washington, DC – November 2, 2011 Asia and the Pacific, Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Russia, In 2010, the National Historic Landmark (NHL) Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union. The Program began actively looking for sites exhibit includes introductory essays on the associated with LGBTQ history that may have the project and the regions, regional bibliographies, potential to be designated as NHLs or listed in and digitized images of letters to the editor, news the National Register of Historic Places. Owner and feature stories, and other items in the approval for these sites is necessary before homophile press. The goal of the project is to nominations can be prepared and the NHL inspire new work on international, transnational, Program has begun working with the LGBTQ and global LGBT history. Funded by a multi-year community to encourage both outreach to grant by the Social Sciences and Humanities owners and the completion of nominations for Research Council of Canada, the archive and these properties. exhibit were created by San Francisco State University historian Marc Stein and a team of six The LGBTQ Theme Study is one of four such graduate student researchers at York University studies either recently completed or underway in Toronto: Shlomo Gleibman, Tamara de Szegheo Lang, Marva Milo, Dasha Serykh, Carly CLBTH Fall 2016 4 Simpson, and Healy Thompson. In 2017 the against AIDS. Lavender and Red brings together project’s work will continue with a collection of archival research, oral histories, and vibrant essays published as a special issue of the Journal images and rediscovers the radical queer past for of . a generation of activists today.

Call for Blog Posts: Sexual Violence in Higher Héctor Domínguez Ruvalcaba published Education. ConditionallyAccepted.com — a Translating the Queer: Body Politics and weekly career advice column for marginalized Transnational Conversations (Zed Books, 2016). scholars on InsideHigherEd — welcomes blog What does it mean to queer a concept? If posts about sexual assault, rape, stalking, queerness is a notion that implies a intimate partner violence, and sexual harassment destabilization of the normativity of the body, in higher education. We are especially interested then all cultural systems contain zones of in reflections on sexual violence as a discomfort relevant to . What then manifestation of systems of oppression other might we make of such zones when the use of the than sexism (like heterosexism, cissexism) and at term queer itself has transcended the fields of the intersections among systems of oppression; sex and gender, becoming a metaphor for in addition, we are interested in featuring essays addressing such cultural phenomena as on sexual violence perpetrated against LGBTQ+ hybridization, resignification, and subversion? people, women of color, fat and plus-size people, Further still, what should we make of it when so men, and people with disabilities. See the full many people are reluctant to use the term queer, call for blog posts here. Blog posts should range because they view it as theoretical colonialism, between 750-1,250 words and be written for a or a concept that loses its specificity when broad academic audience. We pay $200 per post applied to a culture that signifies and uses the (if accepted). Please email pitches or full blog body differently? Translating the Queer focuses posts to Eric Anthony Grollman, Ph.D. on the dissemination of queer knowledge, (pronouns: they/them/theirs), Assistant concepts and representations throughout Latin Professor of Sociology, University of Richmond. America, a migration that has been accompanied by concomitant processes of translation, CLGBTH board member Emily K. Hobson adaptation and epistemological resistance. published Lavender and Red: Liberation and Solidarity in the Gay and Lesbian Left (University Leslie Choquette published “Gay Paree: The of California Press, 2016). Too often LGBTQ Origins of Lesbian and Gay Commercial Culture activism is represented as a self-contained in the French Third Republic” in Contemporary struggle, set apart from other social French Civilization, vol. 41, no. 1, spring 2016; movements. In Lavender and Red, Emily K. and “Beyond the Myth of Lesbian Montmartre: Hobson recounts a different history, one of queer The Case of Chez Palmyre” in Historical radicals who understood their sexual liberation Reflections/Réflexions historiques, vol. 42, no. 2, as intertwined with solidarity against summer 2016. imperialism, war, and racism. Centering on the gay and lesbian left in the late 1960s through Nancy C. Unger gave a talk at the Birmingham, early 1990s San Francisco Bay Area, she Alabama Public Library on the role of gay bars in illuminates how sexual self-determination and American history. Her talk was recorded and revolutionary internationalism converged. archived in the C-SPAN online library. Across the 1970s gay and lesbian leftists embraced socialist and women of color feminism to craft a queer opposition to militarism and the New Right. In the Reagan years, they challenged U.S. intervention in Central America, collaborated with their peers in Nicaragua, and mentored the first direct action CLBTH Fall 2016 5

FRIDAY, JANUARY 6

AHA 2017 8:30-10:00am – In Honor of Horacio N. Roque Ramírez, Part 1: Oral History as Queer Archive: Listening with Horacio N. Roque Ramírez Mile High Ballroom 1A (Colorado Convention THURSDAY, JANUARY 5 Center, Ballroom Level) Cosponsored by the Oral History Association 1:30-3:00pm – Incorporating Queer History into Latin American Survey Courses: A Chair: Roundtable Stephen Vider, Museum of the City of New York Mile High Ballroom 1A (Colorado Convention Center, Ballroom Level) Panel: Cosponsored by the Conference on Latin American Lauren Gutterman, University of Texas at Austin History and the AHA Teaching Division Griselda Jarquin, University of California, Davis Cyrana Wyker, Middle Tennessee State Chair: University Nick Syrett, University of Northern Colorado Comment: Panel: Stephen Vider, Museum of the City of New York Pablo E. Ben, San Diego State University Benjamin A. Cowan, George Mason University 10:30am-12:00pm – In Honor of Horacio N. Zeb Tortorici, New York University Roque Ramírez, Part 2: Remembering the Life Heather A. Vrana, Southern Connecticut State and Work of Horacio N. Roque Ramírez: A University Roundtable Mile High Ballroom 1A (Colorado Convention Center, Ballroom Level) 3:30-5:00pm – Queer Scholars and Cosponsored by the Oral History Association Scholarship on the Job Market: A Roundtable Mile High Ballroom 1D (Colorado Convention Chair: Center, Ballroom Level) Nan Alamilla Boyd, San Francisco State University Chair: Nicholas L. Syrett, University of Northern Panel: Colorado Jennifer Brier, University of Illinois at Chicago William A. Calvo-Quirós, University of Michigan Panel: Marla Ramirez, San Francisco State University Julio Capó Jr., University of Massachusetts Amherst Comment: April Haynes, University of Wisconsin–Madison Nan Alamilla Boyd, San Francisco State Jen Manion, Amherst College University Allison Miller, Perspectives on History Amy H. Sueyoshi, San Francisco State University

12:30-1:30pm – CLGBTH Members’ Meeting: All Welcome!

CLBTH Fall 2016 6 Room 604 (Colorado Convention Center, Meeting Capitol Ballroom 1 (Hyatt Regency Denver, Fourth Room Level) Floor) Sponsored by Gale

Presiding: SATURDAY, JANUARY 7 Amanda H. Littauer, Northern Illinois University Nicholas L. Syrett, University of Northern 8:30-10:00am – Queering Historical Scale, Colorado Part 1: Queer Histories of Sex Work and Sexual Commerce 1:30-3:00pm – In Honor of Horacio N. Roque Mile High Ballroom 1A (Colorado Convention Ramírez, Part 3: That's His Place! Horacio N. Center, Ballroom Level) Roque Ramírez and Queer Latina/o/x Histories Chair: Mile High Ballroom 1A (Colorado Convention Don Romesburg, Sonoma State University Center, Ballroom Level) Cosponsored by the Oral History Association Papers:

Chair: “Queer Cures: Commercial Sex Therapies in Emily K. Hobson, University of Nevada at Reno 19th-Century New York” April Haynes, University of Wisconsin–Madison Panel: Julio Capó Jr., University of Massachusetts “Male-Male Prostitution in 1950s–70s Italian Amherst Fiction” Anahi Russo Garrido, Metropolitan State Alessio Ponzio, University of Michigan University of Denver David Hernández, Mount Holyoke College “Sepia Sex Scenes: Black Women’s Erotic Labor Ana Minian, Stanford University in Early Pornographic Film” Mireille Miller-Young, University of California, Comment: Santa Barbara Emily K. Hobson, University of Nevada at Reno Comment: 3:30-5:00pm – The Role of Historians in a Don Romesburg, Sonoma State University Time of Backlash: An Open Conversation Mile High Ballroom 1A (Colorado Convention 10:30am-12:00pm – Queering Historical Center, Ballroom Level) Scale, Part 2: Queer History beyond the City: Sexuality in 19th- and Early 20th-Century Sponsored by the AHA Committee on LGBTQ Rural America Status in the Profession Mile High Ballroom 1A (Colorado Convention Center, Ballroom Level) Chair: Leisa D. Meyer, College of William and Mary Chair: Colin R. Johnson, Indiana University Panel: Bloomington Leah DeVun, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Papers: Wallace D. Best, Princeton University Debbie Ann Doyle, American Historical “How Big a Scale Should the History of Sexuality Association Cover? Cases of Sexual Slander in America’s Early Republic” 7:30-8:30pm – LGBTQ Historians’ Reception Kent W. Peacock, Florida State University “Rural, Queer, Settler: Astrid Arnoldsen’s CLBTH Fall 2016 7 Montana, c. the 1920s” 3:30-5:00pm – Queering Historical Scale, Part Emily E. Skidmore, Texas Tech University 4: Querying Metanarratives of Queer History in Modern Germany “Laying It All on the Table: Scaling up Rural Mile High Ballroom 1A (Colorado Convention Queer History from Small-Town Wisconsin to Center, Ballroom Level) Transnational Queer Networks” Christopher Hommerding, University of Chair: Wisconsin–Madison April Danielle Trask, Amherst College

Comment: Papers: Gabriel N. Rosenberg, Duke University “To Finally Let Fall the Burdensome Mask: The 1:30-3:00pm – Queering Historical Scale, Part Queer Politics of Carnival in Early 20th-Century 3: Queering Femininity: Gender Normativity Germany” and Lesbian History Christina Carmen Chiknas, Rutgers, The State Mile High Ballroom 1A (Colorado Convention University of New Jersey Center, Ballroom Level) “West German : Escaping the Chair: Stonewall ‘Metanarrative’” Lauren Gutterman, University of Texas at Austin Craig Griffiths, City University London

Papers: “The Afterlives of Sexual Evidence: New Uses for Old Sources in Nazi Germany” “‘Pass Right By Your People’: Femme Invisibility Matthew Conn, Michigan State University and Postwar Lesbian History” Alix Genter, The College of New Jersey Comment: Svanur Petursson, Rutgers, The State University “‘Plagued with Unconscious Homosexual of New Jersey Cravings’: Queer Femininities, Latent Lesbianism, and Postwar American Sexual SUNDAY, JANUARY 8 Culture” Amanda H. Littauer, Northern Illinois University 9:00-10:30am – California Rewrites Its K–12 History “‘Treacherous Sweetness’: Interwar College Girls, Mile High Ballroom 1A (Colorado Convention Lesbianism, and the Specter of Unchecked Center, Ballroom Level) Femininity” Anastasia Jones, University of Toronto Chair: Nancy J. McTygue, California History-Social Comment: Science Project, University of California, Davis Lauren Gutterman, University of Texas at Austin Papers: 2:00-4:00pm – Tour 14: Colorado LGBT History Archives Tour and Presentation, “Overseeing California’s Framework Revision” Denver Public Library Nancy J. McTygue, University of California, Davis; Room 103 (Colorado Convention Center, Meeting Bill Honig, California Department of Education; Room Level) Thomas Adams, California Department of Please sign up when you register for the annual Education meeting. Limit: 15. “The Process of Updating History” Beth Slutsky, University of California, Davis CLBTH Fall 2016 8 “Scholar Advocacy and Incorporating the FAIR Decadence and Gretchen Schultz’s Sapphic Education Act” Fathers—examine the birth of the lesbian as a Don Romesburg, Sonoma State University person and a character, a threat and a fantasy in France during the second half of the nineteenth 11:00am-12:30pm – Incorporating LGBT century. History into the US Survey: A Roundtable Discussion First published in French in 2005, Nicole Albert’s Mile High Ballroom 1A (Colorado Convention Lesbian Decadence aims to explain the cultural Center, Ballroom Level) obsession with sapphism in France during the fin Cosponsored by the AHA Teaching Division de siècle, here described as “the golden age of the lesbian” (xii). For Albert, the omnipresent Chair: mythical lesbian was “demonized and poeticized Amanda H. Littauer, Northern Illinois University at the same time” because of her association with decadence (xix). Rather than a peripheral Panel: literary and artistic movement, decadence is David D. Doyle, Southern Methodist University seen here as the key to the zeitgeist of the entire Catherine O. Jacquet, Louisiana State University century from 1830 to 1930. Decadent aesthetic Jen Manion, Amherst College pursuit of the unnatural, artificial, and Kevin J. Mumford, University of Illinois at unattainable made the figure of the lesbian a Urbana-Champaign perfect metaphor for “absolute, unique, and total nothingness” (235). In her eschatological nihilism, she functioned not only as the embodiment of evil, but also an “alter ego of the Book Reviews artist” (276), indeed the “heroine of modernity” (307).

Nicole Albert, Lesbian Decadence: This argument works best when applied to the Representations in Art and Literature of Fin- decadent canon, as opposed to works reflecting de-Siècle France, trans. Nancy Erber and other aesthetic currents such as romanticism or William A. Peniston (New York: Harrington naturalism. But there is much more to Albert’s Park Press, 2016). book than her thesis. Indeed, its great merit is to provide a virtually exhaustive survey of Gretchen Schultz, Sapphic Fathers: Discourses contemporary sources depicting across of Same-Sex Desire from Nineteenth-Century all genres and traditions, especially non- France (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, canonical literary ones. Albert organizes her 2015). abundant materials into three main parts, divided in turn into twelve chapters. Since Michel Foucault published the first volume of The History of Sexuality in 1976, his Part I takes its title from a recollection by man of understanding of sexuality as a cultural letters Arsène Houssaye: “At that time, Sappho construct has been central to the field of gay and was reborn in Paris…” Three chapters examine lesbian studies. Foucault’s claim that the notion in turn: the resurrection of Sappho’s myth in the of individual , labeled as either mid-nineteenth century; the appropriation of normative or deviant, originated in eighteenth Sappho’s myth by poets from Baudelaire to and nineteenth-century Europe has proven Renée Vivien by way of Verlaine, Swinburne, and especially fruitful. Scholars today continue to Pierre Louÿs; and the topography of lesbian explore the discourses surrounding non- Paris in fin-de-siècle literature and art. The third normative sexuality from this formative period. chapter makes the important point that Paris- Two excellent, thought-provoking, and Lesbos, from Montmartre to the Bois de complementary studies—Nicole Albert’s Lesbian Boulogne and the suburban banks of the Seine, CLBTH Fall 2016 9 “has to be understood as more than the figment phantasmal lesbian must be attributed to a of predominantly male, overactive imagination. complex of issues rather than reduced to one” It was also a set of real practices” (63), hence the (4). She describes a “confluence of discourses challenge for male authors of “tracking down and representations impelled by disparate women’s itineraries” (64). Then as today, bars factors and having potentially divergent played an important role in “the development of ideological stakes” (187). Each of Schultz’s first a sense of community that was evident to four chapters identifies a particular lesbian onlookers” (70). narrative: in poetry, popular fiction, elite fiction, and scientific discourse. She makes no attempt to Part II describes “Her Traits, Her Vices, and Her be exhaustive here, presenting instead close Sexual Aberrations,” in the words of a lesbian- readings of a few texts in each category. obsessed author from 1897. The five chapters in this section address the Foucauldian “The Poetics of Lesbian Identification” describes metamorphosis of sapphism from a practice into two “male quests for selfhood” in which the an identity, a process apparent in both medicine lesbian functions as the poet’s alter ego (29). For and popular culture. Images of hybridity, Baudelaire, she represented “shared social , and hermaphroditism, viewed as the marginality and moral abjection,” leading him to ultimate symptom of the decline and fall and celebrate and vilify her at the same time (44). civilization, reflect the crisis of masculinity and Verlaine, in contrast, used lesbianism as a cover virulent anti-feminism characteristic of the fin de for male homoeroticism, permitting him to siècle. At the same time, in the hands of lesbians, deliver “a vindication for and sacralization of they engendered a new sexual imagination and homosexuality” (57). language of eroticism. Far from the self-absorption of lyric poetry, the The four chapters in Part III—“Damned Women crowded world of popular fiction combined male or Exquisite Creatures?”—make the case for the voyeurism with an anti-feminist agenda when lesbian as decadent heroine, inspiring both portraying lesbians. Schultz explores both violent hatred and secret admiration. The through a case study of Adolphe Belot, the themes of “Deadly Pleasures,” “The Half- author of nearly thirty plays and fifty commercial Women,” “Female Narcissus,” and “Female novels in about thirty years, many of them Spaces, Male Gaze” are reminiscent of those lesbian-themed. Her discussion of lesbians in considered in Idols of Perversity, Bram Dykstra’s elite fiction foregrounds not titillation but the classic study of feminine evil in decadent trope of degeneration, in addition to the virulent iconography and literature. All three parts of anti-feminism shared by male novelists of all Albert’s book are handsomely illustrated with stripes. Unlike Albert, she distinguishes carefully both black-and-white images and color plates. between naturalists and decadents among elite writers, particularly with regards to their class Taking Albert’s study as a starting point, in politics. While naturalists portrayed lesbians as Sapphic Fathers Gretchen Schultz covers similar lower-class prostitutes, contaminating the social terrain but makes a different argument. Like order from below, decadents saw lesbianism as Albert, Schultz seeks to explain the obsession the sign of a decaying aristocracy. Unfortunately, with lesbianism in late nineteenth-century Schultz’s criteria for differentiating elite from France, particularly among male authors. For popular literature are not always clear. Some Schultz, the period 1850-1900 was characterized authors she considers, such as Catulle Mendès, by polarized and distinct arguably straddle the two,. sexualities, as distinguished from romanticism’s earlier valorization of androgyny and ambiguity. Schultz’s fourth chapter, “Scientia Sapphica,” In an implicit critique of Albert, for whom examines the origins of scientific discourse on decadence provides an overarching framework, lesbianism, which justified punitive moral Schultz claims, “the phenomenon of the regulation—up to and including genital CLBTH Fall 2016 10 mutilation—under the pretense of objectivity. As for Baudelaire, Schultz focuses on the place of Like Albert, she highlights the interpenetration sapphism in his aesthetic agenda but omits his of literary and scientific representation. personal life—including his bisexual lover, Jeanne Duval—from her analysis. In her fifth and final chapter, Schultz claims that despite having “little or no correlation with Nor was Baudelaire alone among sapphic fathers historic persons or lived reality,” these multiple in having intimate acquaintance with lesbians. lesbian narratives “nonetheless quite likely Both heterosexual voyeurs like Maupassant and contributed to the formulation of identities” (5). Toulouse-Lautrec and closeted homosexuals like A very brief section subtitled “Paris-Lesbos” Louÿs and Mendès counted lesbians among their references “the fairly sudden apparition of closest friends and lovers. At least two novels subjective homoerotic literature at the turn of discussed in Schultz’s third chapter—Péladan’s the century” (190) while ignoring earlier lesbian La Gynandre and Mendès’ Méphistophéla— literary voices. clearly had their origins in lived experience. La Gynandre came out in 1891, the year Péladan Beyond the appropriation and reinvestment of unsuccessfully courted lesbian painter Louise representations by a lesbian literary elite, Abbéma. The lesbian associations he describes, Schultz wants to get at “the impact of such texts far from being fantasies, are modeled on real on common readers” (193). She assumes that no ones; the club he calls the Orchidées refers direct evidence survives from fin-de-siècle transparently to the Oeillet Blanc, an occult France, although the press in fact described self- society of women artists and writers that met in identified lesbians reacting to books and Abbéma’s studio. For its part, Méphistophéla performances. Instead she delves into the transposes the failure of Mendès’ relationship reception of American lesbian pulps in the with composer Augusta Holmès, who left him for 1950s—hence the jarring cover image, which a woman in 1886 over his demand that she has nothing to do with nineteenth-century sacrifice her career to raise their children. France. Schultz makes a good case for the double Mendès published the work in 1890, the year audience of later pulps: male consumers and after Holmès reached the pinnacle of women in search of a language for their sexual professional success as composer and desires. Using oral history and autobiography, choreographer for the opening pageant of the she shows that the “unintended” lesbian World’s Fair. audience found “mirrors for their difference” in the pulps and consumed them avidly (225). Of course, works of art and literature do not merely reflect reality, but as Albert demonstrates Schultz’s overall contention that male-authored in her discussion of lesbian topography, sapphic discourses are largely “the result of sometimes they do. As a social historian, I seek speculation or invention, rather than personal primarily to elucidate the lived contexts in which observation” of queer or lesbian life is more discourses are produced, and excavate evidence problematic (9). Although she recognizes the of the actual communities that evolved in pertinence of biography, she is reluctant to tandem with the mythic imagination. Historians connect texts to the identities or experiences of interested in cultural and intellectual history will their authors, even where these are manifestly find both of these books indispensable to relevant. Only in the case of Verlaine does understanding the epistemological shift that Schultz describe lesbianism as “a cipher for male took place within Western thinking about homosexuality” (63), but the same could be said sexuality in the nineteenth century. of many other sapphic fathers she discusses. -Leslie Choquette, Institut français, Assumption College

CLBTH Fall 2016 11 Marlon M. Bailey, Butch Queens Up in Pumps: of a need to create alternative spaces for Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in themselves. Through this system, Bailey Detroit (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan theorizes “realness”—which in the Ballroom Press, 2013). scene describes how well a competitor embodies their particular category—as the way the Popular images of Ballroom culture often consist presentation of the body creates identity. He of twirling bodies pantomiming to house tracks argues that realness simultaneously highlights in basements tucked away in New York’s the constructedness of identity as well as underground. This notion, in part, is due to members’ self-conscious performances of gender Jennie Livingston’s popular 1990 documentary and sexuality. Indeed, the work of realness, in Paris is Burning. In Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Bailey’s view, is to highlight the multiple Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in possibilities of constructing gender and Detroit, Marlon M. Bailey complicates such sexuality. However, while there is perhaps images by examining Ballroom culture in greater fluidity within the Ballroom gender and contemporary Detroit. Balls, events in which sexuality system, he contends that these forms of members compete, or “walk,” in a variety of identification can nevertheless reify dominant categories, serve as one of the foundations of the gender norms. Ballroom scene. These performance categories are dictated by a nuanced gender and sexuality Bailey builds upon this conceptualization of system that structures members’ identities. gender performance and identity through his However, Bailey argues that the significance of notion of “housework.” He derives this term from Ballroom culture run deeper than competition the houses that make up the Ballroom scene. for trophies. Instead, Bailey argues, Ballroom Each house is composed of a number of children culture creates an alternative world through a and a housemother or housefather who mentors variety of interpersonal networks that support them. Bailey describes housework as “the kin disenfranchised black LGBT people in Detroit. labor... Ballroom members undertake to develop and maintain these familylike units” (80). For Butch Queens Up in Pumps explores the survival Bailey, housework organizes the Ballroom scene strategies of black LGBT people through lenses through the performances that both support of gender, labor, and kinship. Drawing on oral members and create the events where they interviews with House members and negotiate their identities. He notes that the balls “performance ethnography,” as Bailey analyzes are produced by two types of labor: the physical his own Ballroom performance, alongside that of labor that transforms a lodge or conference his fellow competitors. Through this method, center into a ballroom, and the social labor of Bailey documents community practices of the assigning appropriate tasks to each member of Detroit Ballroom scene and examines what they the house. The housemother or housefather mean for its members. delegates tasks to their charges as part of this collective effort, and the children who have Bailey begins by situating Ballroom culture participated the longest are given the most within the longer history of black queer and responsibility. Bailey argues that this replication gender nonconforming people in Detroit since of a family structure reinforces kinship as central the 1940s. In doing so, he positions this to the Ballroom community. Drawing from Judith contemporary community alongside a long Halberstam’s work on queer space, Bailey shows tradition of black people creating culture and that black queer house members transform belonging outside of the mainstream. The system exclusionary spaces into ones that actively of gender and sexual categories used in Ballroom “support their non-normative sexual identities, culture is complex, and provides possibilities for embodiments, and community values and identity beyond the binaries of male/female and practices” (146). Through housework, the or gay/straight. This system, Bailey argues, was Ballroom community thus affirms the lives of its developed by black queer people in Detroit out members. CLBTH Fall 2016 12 Bailey’s examination of labor and gender Showcasing Ballroom’s complex, interwoven, performance together through housework and mutable performances of race, gender, ultimately gestures toward the role of kinship in sexuality, and kinship, Bailey provides a maintaining and supporting black LGBT people. narrative that has implications far beyond Much of this analytical work is found in his Detroit. As questions of gender and embodiment discussion of the politics of HIV/AIDS, as Bailey become more prevalent across various fields, argues that “strategies for HIV/AIDS prevention and notions of identity become less fixed, Butch already exist within the Ballroom community Queens Up in Pumps provides a useful account of and culture” (26). While the Ballroom scene both the way identities are produced via offers entertainment, it also generates performance and their political implications. knowledge about HIV/AIDS through “prevention Although performance ethnography may not be a balls”—annual events sponsored by various methodology suited to all disciplines, Bailey’s organizations dedicated to educating black LGBT questions surrounding the politics of the people about HIV/AIDS. Speaking both to the Ballroom scene make important contributions to stigma of HIV/AIDS and the relative lack of the intertwined histories of gender, sexuality, culturally specific approaches to prevention for and race. black communities, members of the Ballroom -C.L. Green scene provide information via these balls to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign combat disproportional levels of HIV transmission among black LGBT people. In this Ben Eshleman, Jess Wiltey, Charlie Backus, way, prevention balls reinforce the House and Maxwell Harvey-Sampson, Trans system as a site of both social support and Rochester Speaks (Rochester Institute of knowledge production. Balls and the Technology, 2016) performances that structure them are indeed much more than entertainment or competition; In recent years, transgender people have they are integral to the survival of the received more public attention than ever before. community. Laverne Cox’s 2014 appearance on the cover of Time, for an article titled “The Transgender Although Bailey positions Ballroom culture Tipping Point,” stands out as particularly within the longer history of black LGBT significant. In this new atmosphere of trans communities, Butch Queen Up in Pumps is not a visibility, undergraduate students at the history of the Ballroom scene. At times, the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, larger context in which the balls developed fades New York have created Trans Rochester Speaks, a into the background, as Bailey focuses on the digital exhibit showcasing local trans history as particularities of these cultural formations. early as the 1970s. Using six oral histories, While Detroit is the central site in the study, a supplemented by archival research, the website specifically historical approach might read this highlights a tradition of trans social life, activism, Ballroom culture more intimately within the and culture in Rochester that has continued city’s history of racial stratification. Such an through to the present. The project team approach could further open possibilities for consisted of students Ben Eshleman, Jess Wiltey, comparative work regarding cultural production Charlie Backus, and Maxwell Harvey-Sampson, by urban queers of color in the United States. as well as Dr. Tamar Carroll, a professor of history at RIT and the project’s faculty advisor. However, while Bailey’s ethnographic approach is not principally historical in nature, his The landing page for Trans Rochester Speaks repositioning of the Ballroom scene as positions the project as a “dialogue in productive labor—rather than mere spectacle— community history” celebration of the trans life and his centering of blackness as the position in the city. The bulk of the site is divided into a that informs the production of this culture marks number of sections: People, Topics, Impressions, a critical intervention in LGBT studies. Timeline, Resources, and Glossary. The People CLBTH Fall 2016 13 section functions as the center of the exhibit, history clips into thematic playlists, such as presenting oral history excerpts from four “Political Involvement” and “Visibility,” offering women and two men who share their users another way to navigate through the experiences of being trans in Rochester. The interview material. The Impressions section interviews cover topics such as identity offers a narrative of trans history since the formation and coming out, healthcare, their 1970s . Here visitors learn about both local and relationship—often contentious—between national trans movements visibility, dignity, and gay/lesbian and trans activists, and experiences acceptance. The titles of these sections can be with participating in trans groups, both locally confusing, which is a liability when visitors can and online. Several participants also comment on click away from an online exhibit at any time. parenthood, and both men discuss their One might reasonably assume Topics to offer experiences with lesbian organizing. These thematic interpretations of the site’s material, interviews are valuable for the way they reveal and Impressions seems an odd title for the personal perspectives on identity and section of the site containing the project’s main community, and offer insights into Rochester’s historical synthesis. A future version of the site local history. might combine the People and Topics sections, making clear that they contain the same oral Each interview is edited down to between history material. twenty and thirty minutes, and is presented as a series of short audio clips with titles and The remaining sections—Timeline, Resources, descriptions, but no transcripts. This focuses the and Glossary—also serve to place Rochester’s user on the orality of the interviews, but also trans history in a national context, and point limits the site’s accessibility for hearing- curious visitors toward opportunities for further impaired visitors. Sound quality in the research. The timeline, adapted from the New interviews varies—there is a TV or radio playing York Times, combines local city and state events in the background of one interview—but in with national developments, from Christine general the clips are high in quality with minimal Jorgensen’s sex-change surgery in 1952 to New interruptions. Large photographs of the York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s executive order narrators accompany most clips, conveying a protecting trans rights issued in January 2016. sense of pride and immediacy rather than a The Resources section offers academic context disembodied or distant voice. The People section for the website, with links to books trans history also offers profiles of trans women who and oral history methods, other trans oral appeared in The Empty Closet, Rochester’s LGBT history projects, and archives of The Empty newspaper, during the 1970s. Since the Closet, which happens to be one of the longest interviews mostly address the 1980s through the running LGBT newspapers in the United States. 2000s, these earlier profiles allow the project to Finally, the glossary contains entries for relevant extend its coverage of Rochester’s trans history terms such as “” and “dysphoria,” as further back in time. However, even with these well as for specific organizations such as additions, almost all of the people featured on Genesee Valley Gender Variants and Tri-Ess. For the site are middle class, white, and politically those organizations that are still in operation, active. The website acknowledges this such as ACT UP New York, the entry includes a shortcoming and points out that future research link to the group’s website. could expand the conversation. However, in its current iteration, Trans Rochester Speaks While the project has value as a historical source, celebrates a limited range of trans experiences. it also functions an example of a well-conceived digital exhibit. Public history often depends on The remainder of the website contextualizes the design for an effective presentation, especially in oral histories, tying them to a national trans an online setting where visitors are self-directed. narrative and offering avenues for further Trans Rochester Speaks has an inviting, research. The Topics section sorts the oral immersive structure, eliminating sidebars or CLBTH Fall 2016 14 pop-ups. Instead, users navigate the site via a psychological anthropology (then called culture header bar, or simply by scrolling down the and personality studies), a contemporary of such project page. In line with current best practices, celebrated scholars as Margaret Mead, and one the navigation bar highlights the visitor’s of the first generation of influential women position in relation to the site as a whole, and anthropologists. She did research in Southeast allows them to jump around the site’s contents. and South Asia before such work was common in The Resources section further enriches the user anthropology, and because of her expertise was experience. Unfortunately all this work becomes recruited during World War II to work for the a jumble when viewed on a mobile device; an Office of Strategic Services (OSS). During the app or responsive site design would not early Cold War, she worked in Washington, DC as necessarily be the best option in this case, but a Southeast Asia specialist for the State the project would benefit from an automatic Department, before finding her way back into notification informing mobile users that the site academic life, as the first woman to be tenured as functions best on a larger screen. a full professor at Harvard. Along the way, her life intersected with the political and cultural Trans Rochester Speaks offers a number of developments of the day, as both her gender and contributions to queer history as a whole. The sexuality as a lesbian presented obstacles to her material gives visitors insight into the local career. history of trans activism in Rochester, and points toward a richer national trans history that Du Bois’ lesbianism only occasionally seemed to includes regions like upstate New York. By be the major factor in determining her showing how Rochester residents lived and professional choices; for most of her career she conceived of themselves in past decades, the simply followed her interests, and was able to project’s oral histories contextualize modern carve out a significant niche in the emerging field trans identity politics. The choice to divide the of culture and personality studies. Du Bois was interviews into discrete segments will also make born in 1903, and completed her bachelor’s the site useful for instructors who want to bring degree at Barnard College before going on to do trans history into the classroom. The project is her doctoral studies at UC Berkeley. There she consistently respectful of the narrators and worked under such noted anthropologists as keeps its focus on their voices, while remaining Alfred Kroeber and Robert Lowie, who were accessible for a general public that may be new themselves part of the first generation of to trans history or trans studies. In spite of a few anthropologists trained by Franz Boas at design problems and a relatively small pool of Columbia. The directions she took in the early oral history narrators, Trans Rochester Speaks years after receiving her PhD in 1932 were offers a good example of an effective digital largely determined by her difficulties securing a exhibit and a standout undergraduate project. faculty position as a woman. She did, however, -Hannah Givens, University of West Georgia win a prestigious fellowship from the National Research Council that brought her to Harvard to Susan C. Seymour, Cora Du Bois: study psychiatry with Abraham Kardiner. Her Anthropologist, Diplomat, Agent (Lincoln, NE: desire to test out some of the ideas she had University of Nebraska Press, 2015). developed during her clinical training then took her to the island of Alor, in what is now Lesbian and gay people lead both ordinary and Indonesia. Based on her lengthy fieldwork there, extraordinary lives, with multiple sources of she produced The People of Alor, an influential identity shaping their experience. Susan C. ethnographic work on the relationship between Seymour’s highly readable biography of personality and culture. anthropologist Cora Du Bois brings this reality into sharp relief, embedding her life in the During her service with the OSS during World historical and intellectual contexts of her time. War II, Du Bois formed a relationship with Du Bois was a pioneer of what is now known as Jeanne Taylor, an artist also working with the CLBTH Fall 2016 15 agency in Ceylon, which lasted until Du Bois’ assistance even when she could ill afford such death in 1991. Although the two were relatively generosity. As a woman, she had to contend with visible as couple during Du Bois’ Harvard years, the prevailing gender biases of the academy, the relationship caused considerable difficulty although she seems never to have doubted the during the Red Scare of the 1950s. While rightness of her intellectual path. Seymour’s working for the State Department after World biography makes clear how Du Bois’s life and War II, both Du Bois’ lesbianism and opposition work were embedded in the intellectual and to US military involvement in Southeast Asia political trends of the time even as she made her a target of the red-baiters intent on questioned and expanded the direction of her rooting out “disloyalty” in the State Department. discipline. Her work during World War II and for Du Bois decided to return to academia, but the State Department exemplifies a kind of rampant redbaiting presented obstacles there as service anthropology performed for the nation well. She was offered a position at UC Berkeley, when doing so did not present the kinds of which she had often described as her dream job, ethical problems that discouraged later scholars but turned down the position rather than from serving in such capacities. While Du Bois compromise her principles by signing the loyalty seemed to take her sexuality for granted in a way oath required by the university. Not long after, in that later activists have found difficult, her 1954, she was appointed to an endowed situation as a lesbian reflects the artful dance professorship for distinguished woman scholars between openness and discretion that marked at Harvard and Radcliffe, becoming the first how gay women managed their lives in the mid- tenured woman to serve at the former twentieth century. She paid a price for loving institution. As such, her presence stirred up women, but didn’t seem to think she deserved to misogyny among Harvard colleagues who demand different treatment—another indication resented her presence and strove to maintain the of the time in which she lived. college’s all-male environment. Her years at Harvard were littered with slights and affronts, Other scholars have produced biographies of including a salary that was markedly lower than LGBT scholars whose research agendas were those of her male peers, which in turn led to a more clearly shaped by their , precarious retirement and considerable but we know less about those whose careers bitterness about the shabby treatment she were further removed from the study of gender endured. and sexuality. These lives warrant further investigation: not all gay or lesbian scholars use Despite her committed domestic relationship their own identities as the starting point for with Taylor, Du Bois had an intense affair with academic research. DuBois’s career was defined the writer May Sarton during the late 1950s, in large part by a particular historical moment, which ended due to professional obligations— but other LGBT scholars working in more recent she spent a year at the Center for Advanced times have similarly not seen sexual identity as Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford—as key to their intellectual work. Their professional well as Du Bois’s reluctance to inflict pain on paths may be illuminated by DuBois’s story, even Taylor. Later to become a feminist literary icon, as the price we pay for being LGBT is far less Sarton immortalized her relationship with Cora onerous than it once was. in many poems and in the novel, Mrs. Stevens -Ellen Lewin Hears the Mermaids Singing, in which she University of Iowa modeled the main character’s lover on Du Bois. Seymour’s biography, inspired by her own time Jennifer Tyburczy, Sex Museums: The Politics as one of the subject’s graduate students, ably and Performance of Display (University of situates Du Bois’ life in the intersecting domains Chicago Press, 2016). she inhabited. As the daughter of immigrants to the US, she maintained ongoing ties with her Historians fetishize the archive. We theorize its European relatives, often sending them financial absences and silences. We romanticize our CLBTH Fall 2016 16 fervent digging in dusty files. We uphold present (180). To demonstrate this point, hierarchies of scholarship in which work without Tyburczy offers an expansive overview of the archival research is politely brushed aside as theory and history of sexual exhibition. Through “synthetic”—devoid of the raw source materials a series of case studies both historical and of history. Sometimes, we even pretend those contemporary, she shows that museum practices source materials offer a uniquely unmediated serve to establish and reinforce normative window into history. modes of spectatorship, which queer curatorship promises to interrupt. However, archive fever is a malady to which the broader public remains almost wholly immune. By way of example, Tyburczy compares the As Jennifer Tyburczy adroitly observes in her histories of Gustave Courbet’s painting L’origine smart, refreshing new book, museums are the du monde (1866) and Andrea Fraser’s video sites through which many people produce and installation Untitled (2003) to bring into stark consume collective memory. And yet historians, clarity the regulation of sexuality and gender and particularly historians of sexuality, have not through exhibition. Courbet’s work constitutes given museums the sort of attention that we “the quintessential example of collecting and have lavished upon archives. Sex Museums does displaying sex in the public sphere in the West,” just that, and offers a profound, generative its graphic genital peering an apotheosis of what contribution to the public history of sexuality. Tyburczy labels “erotic exhibitionism” (42). In contrast, Fraser’s work has often critiqued the Tyburczy begins with the 2010 controversy over capitalist commodification of both art and the Smithsonian’s exhibition Hide/Seek: sexuality. For Untitled, she arranged a Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, in commission in which she had sex with a male which ambitious queer programming fell prey to collector, recorded the act, and exhibited the a conservative backlash whose “accusations resulting video in a Manhattan gallery. The art were almost verbatim repetitions” of those made world’s response ranged from suppressed by such antigay reactionaries as Senator Jesse anxiety to outright hostility and misplaced Helms during the 1980s culture wars. Even the whorephobia, and Fraser effectively withdrew target remained the same. The short Untitled from circulation. In comparing the experimental film A Fire in My Belly by David divergent receptions of the two works, Tyburczy Wojnarowicz, whose work drew the ire of reveals the gendered aspects of erotic congressional conservatives and right-wing exhibitionism. Female bodies, it seems, are more pundits before his death from AIDS-related acceptably displayed as erotic objects than as complications in 1992, was ultimately pulled subjects. from the gallery as alleged anti-Christian “hate speech” (xiii). The Smithsonian’s capitulation felt Tyburczy further argues that, as sites for the eerily reminiscent of the censorship cultivation of collective memory, museums spearheaded by Helms at the height of the AIDS “establish taxonomies of normalcy” (11). By epidemic, but the controversy also echoed a extension, they also stigmatize deviance. For much longer history. For Tyburczy the Hide/Seek example, at the 1937 Degenerate Art exhibition episode thus raises a deceptively simple in Munich, the Nazi regime displayed sexual question: “How should we display the history of perversion in such a way as to maximize sexuality?” (175) affective impact and political effect. The exhibition, with its deliberately bad lighting and Tyburczy’s answer is queer curatorship, or a framing, and abrasive slogans interspersed with mode of “putting on its feet.” By the featured pieces, was intended to leave this she means that displayed artifacts should attendees “overwhelmed, disoriented, and even not just be contextualized historically, but also in nauseated,” thus solidifying negative feelings terms of how they represent power relations and that linked perversity with Modernism and the solicitation of desire, in both the past and the Jewishness (90). CLBTH Fall 2016 17 disidentify with MuseXo’s underlying idea of After World War II, such overtly slanderous U.S.-centric sexual modernity. attacks declined, but Tyburczy is especially Tyburczy concludes with an applied case study attuned to more subtle forms of sexual in queer curatorship. She describes her own regulation enacted through cultural display. Here efforts at Chicago’s Leather Archives and she uses the groundbreaking 1994 New York Museum to properly display a leather sword Public Library exhibition Becoming Visible: The sheath and whip that allegedly derived from an Legacy of Stonewall as a case study, highlighting antebellum Louisiana plantation, where their use warning signs about “sexually explicit content” on slaves was decidedly at odds with the value as a way to “[manage] not only queer sex but system of BDSM communities. Furthermore, this also how museum patrons are made to feel about took place at an institution not renowned by it,” by creating “an emotional habitus predicated communities of color for its sensitivity to race. on shame and anxiety” (103, 106). Balancing deft After internal staff debate, Tyburczy decided as application of theory, including Judith Butler’s curator to display the sheath and whip, but with concept of implicit censorship, with a detailed accompanying text that made visible the debate account of the exhibition’s planning and and questioned the relationships of pleasure, execution, Tyburczy expertly shows both the power, and consent to histories of racial logic and the embodiment of this new mode of domination. Using Issac Julien’s short film The mediating sexual display. Attendant (1993) as accompaniment, the exhibit also actively solicited dialogue; indeed, an Tyburczy next surveys several contemporary sex appreciative response written and signed with a museums, whose social functions “blur the lines lipstick kiss by Mollena Williams, the self- between active and passive sex tourism” within declared “Perverted Negress” and a leading “postindustrial sexual commerce” (129). New figure among kinksters-of-color communities, York City’s Museum of Sex, established in 2002, effectively became part of the display and helped offers a successful model of the for-profit set its hermeneutic parameters. museum, arrived at after the New York State Board of Regents rejected its nonprofit charter. Tyburczy covers a great deal of intellectual MoSex, as it is called, “hovers comfortably” ground in Sex Museum, and is to be commended between traditional museum and sex shop, with for the book’s sheer capaciousness; her analysis the museum effectively legitimizing patrons’ is playful, rigorous, transnational in scope, and consumerist erotic purchases (136). Mexico attentive to detail. However, the book is not City’s El Museo del Sexo (MuseXo) pushes these without its shortcomings. Tyburczy’s bold tendencies even further. The now-defunct introductory claim that “All Museums are Sex MuseXo dispensed entirely with the historical Museums” goes unresolved, and she might have and anthropological trappings of the traditional fleshed out how those museums that do not museum (151). Instead, it displayed only engage directly with sexuality can still be read commercial products. Tyburczy’s brilliant through its lens. Moreover, in her wide-ranging analysis of these sex objects as “necessary props discussion, not every analytic tangent fully in the performance of sexual First World-ness” returns to the fold. Nevertheless, Tyburczy shows how MuseXo worked to modulate post- explicitly offers the book as itself a performative NAFTA sexuality, creating a homonormative exhibition, and in that sense fully achieves her “cosmopolitan queer subjectivity” that rested on goal: Sex Museums leaves the reader slightly tacit valorization of whiteness and obscured dizzy, abuzz with ideas, and excited to apply Mexico’s own radical queer history (154, 152). them. Yet the museum also contained its own -Whitney Strub countervailing narrative, with vernacular Rutgers University–Newark albures—raunchy jokes that ran as text alongside the displayed artifacts and helped patrons

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