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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2022
Digitization of archival materials has made it easier not only to analyze queer history during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, but also to include these sources in the classroom. For instructors interested in incorporating queer history into their classrooms, this piece highlights specific examples of these queer primary sources and what they reveal about the queer past. Focusing specifically on criminal statutes, legal records, newspaper articles, medical discourse, and firsthand accounts, this introduction to queer archival sources emphasizes how these sources can be incorporated into class lectures and discussions, as well as directing attention to where similar examples can be found online in digital archives and databases.
1 Katie M. Hemphill, “‘Pastor was Trapped’: Queer Scandal and Contestations Over Christian Anti-Vice Reform,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 21 (July 2022): 182–200; Wendy Rouse, “‘A Very Crushable, Kissable Girl’: Queer Love and the Invention of the Abnormal Girl among College Women in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 21 (July 2022): 201–220.
2 For the history of sodomy laws in the United States and their changing definitions, see Eskridge, William N. Jr. Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Laws in America, 1861–2003 (New York: Viking, 2008)Google Scholar.
3 Brightly, Frank F., compiler Brightly’s Purdon’s Digest: A Digest of the Statute Law of the State of Pennsylvania from the Year 1700 to 1894 (Philadelphia: Kay and Brother, 1894), 539 Google Scholar.
4 Lester, , Rowell, C., and Hill, W.B., The Code of the State of Georgia (Atlanta, GA: Jas. P. Harrison & Co., 1882 Google Scholar), 1145; Guy A. Brown and Hiland H. Wheeler, The Compiled Statutes of the State of Nebraska. 1881. With Amendments 1882 to 1907, Comprising All Laws of a General Nature in Force July 5, 1907 (Lincoln, NE: State Journal Company, 1907), 1969; Revised Statutes of the State of Nebraska 1913 (Lincoln, NE: State Journal Co., 1914), 2356.
5 HeinOnline, “State Statutes: A Historical Archive,” https://home.heinonline.org/content/state-statutes-a-historical-archive/. While a subscription service, HeinOnline may be available to instructors with access to the database through their institution.
6 Eskridge, Dishonorable Passions, 387–407; George Painter, “The Sensibilities of Our Forefathers: The History of Sodomy Laws in the United States,” http://www.glapn.org/sodomylaws/sensibilities/introduction.htm.
7 “Cicero H. Thompson v. State of Nebraska” in Reports of the Cases in the Supreme Court of Nebraska, September Term, 1900–January Term, 1901, Vol. 61 (Lincoln, NE: State Journal Company, Law Publishers, 1901), 210.
8 Maryland Vice Commission, Report, Vol. 1, 423–28. Enoch Pratt Library, Baltimore, Maryland.
9 For the use of sodomy laws in prosecutions of assaults on young and teenage boys, see Robertson, Stephen, Crimes against Children: Sexual Violence and Legal Culture in New York City, 1880–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 57–71 Google Scholar.
10 Chauncey, George, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994)Google Scholar.
11 Nexis Uni, https://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/professional/academic/nexis-uni.page. Like HeinOnline, Nexis Uni is a subscription database that may be available to those with access through an academic institution.
12 “A Female Man,” The Oshkosh Northwestern, Oct. 30, 1883; “That Female Man,” The Oshkosh Northwestern, Oct. 31, 1883.
13 Manion, Jen, Female Husbands: A Trans History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 231–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14 Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/) is associated with Ancestry and is a paid subscription service, although instructors may have access to the database through institutional libraries. While not as large of a database as newspapers.com, Chronicling America (https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/) is a free database supported by the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
15 The author of the 1886 book Psychopathia Sexualis—one of the first medical texts to study homosexuality—Krafft-Ebing was a foundational figure in the fields of psychiatry, sexology, and the study of sexual deviance.
16 Duggan, Lisa, Sapphic Slashers: Sex, Violence, and American Modernity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.
17 Hartland, Claude, The Story of a Life: For the Consideration of the Medical Fraternity (St. Louis, MO: 1901)Google Scholar.
18 Wendy Rouse, “‘A Very Crushable, Kissable Girl.’”
19 The Stella Bloch Hanau records are available digitally through Barnard Digital Collects: https://digitalcollections.barnard.edu/object/0/stella-bloch-hanau-scrapbook-collection.