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Trainee Showcase 2025: Part 2

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This is the second of a four-part series of presentation summaries for the 2025 Trainee showcase. If you missed the previous post, you can find it directly below this one!

Gareth Smith – Uniomachia: a new Digital Edition in TEI XML

Written by Zac Draysey

The yellowed title page of Uniomachia, featuring its title, author, and a small illustration of a tree being chopped down by a disembodied hand with an axe.
The title page of Uniomachia

Gareth’s presentation was an engaging deep-dive into Uniomachia, a forgotten gem of comic classical parody unearthed during his traineeship at the Oxford Union Library. Drawing on his strong background in Classics and Ancient History, Gareth recounted his excitement upon discovering this obscure 1833 satirical poem written in a mix of Ancient Greek, Latin, and English. The poem, penned by Oxford students Thomas Jackson and William Sinclair, parodies Homeric epic to dramatize a real political schism within the Oxford Union, transforming an internal dispute into a mock-epic battle between ‘heroes.’ Gareth walked us through how the text not only imitates Homeric style but also includes absurd scholarly commentary in Latin, designed to mock academic pretensions.

Gareth’s project focused on producing a digital edition which aimed to make this otherwise inaccessible work available to a modern audience. His work involved producing a facsimile, transcription, English translation, and detailed commentary, all encoded for Taylor Editions. He illustrated the complexity of the task through a textual analysis of a passage from the poem that showed how deeply layered the satire is, touching on everything from Classical allusions to real Oxford figures like A.C. Tait, a future Archbishop of Canterbury. The audience got a glimpse of the wit embedded in the text and the scholarly humour behind the pseudo-critical notes. Gareth’s blend of insight and humour made for a fascinating presentation, and he ended with a playful farewell, echoing the spirit of the original text.

Kate Hanson – Adventures in digitization

Notes by Gia Simmons, written by Yasmeen Khan

As the graduate trainee based at Christ Church College, it was almost inevitable that Kate would end up interacting with the legacy of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll). It was perhaps a little unexpected, however, when she was handed several hundred of his personal letters and asked to digitise them. 

Those who know a little about Carroll will likely know that alongside being an author, mathematician, and photographer, he was also a prolific letter-writer – so prolific, in fact, that his logs show him sending and receiving 98,721 letters in the last 35 years of his life. Christ Church was fortunate enough to get their hands on some of these letters through an incredibly generous donation by Jon A. Lindseth, and they quickly realised that they needed to increase global access to these items whilst reducing the number of people physically handling them. Thus, it was decided that the best course of action would be to digitise as many of them as possible. 

A photography studio in a library
Kate’s photography set-up

In an act that mirrored one of Carroll’s own 19th century photography set-ups, Kate was equipped with an ad-hoc digitisation studio and banished to the attics of Christ Church to photograph each and every item in crisp detail. Her patient and detail-oriented work bore fruit, and Kate ended the project having successfully digitised 232 out of the original 235 items; unfortunately, the wear and tear of time meant that the remaining three items were too fragile for digitisation. In total, Kate took over 600 images of the books, photographs, letters, envelopes, slips, and pictures that make up the Jon A. Lindseth Collection. The project rounded out with a 24 GB file size, allowing viewers to examine the items in minute detail – Kate pointed out, for example, that it is possible to make out the grain of the paper in some photographs.

But these impressive results naturally came with a few difficulties. Kate had to quickly get to grips with the subtle art of digitisation while grappling with the reality of the material as she found it. Not only were many of the items completely different sizes (forcing her to deal with the havoc of adjusting the lighting and focus), but many had been attached to or tucked inside other items and had to be recorded as such in the photographic record.

Overall, Kate’s trainee project was a fascinating meeting-point between the 19th century and modern day. Although her prior lack of Carroll knowledge meant that she had to quickly come to terms with both his triumphs and controversies, she found that reading his personal letters humanised him immensely. Kate’s brilliant project will not only allow people to encounter the legendary Lewis Carroll, but to interact with the sometimes-overlooked Charles Dodgson. Her work over the course of this year will not only have a lasting impact on Christ Church, but the greater field of Carroll Studies as a whole.

Millie Krantz – Some men in Oxford: queer life at All Souls

Written by Jake Banyard

Millie’s valuable project explored a history of queer experience at All Souls College and the wider university that has often lacked visibility and attention.

The project culminated in the curation of an exhibition of Millie’s findings, and her presentation began with an examination of the role of exhibitions in a college environment. Exhibitions can provide useful opportunities for college libraries to encourage reader engagement and promote their collections, as well as providing justification for Librarians to carry out interesting research and get to know their collections better. Millie raised the interesting question of who exhibitions should be aimed at: academics, students, readers, or the public? In the context of All Souls, Millie also considered the wide range of library users in the college, from fellows using the significant early printed book collection, to law undergraduates and naval history researchers. Who of these would be interested in the exhibition? For Millie this project also served as a way to begin to answer that question.

An exhibition case featuring a selection of books and papers pertaining to queer life at All Souls
Part of Millie’s exhibition

The focal point of the exhibition was the life and papers of John Sparrow. Made a fellow of All Souls in 1929, he remained so until his death in 1992 and served as the College’s Warden from 1952-1977. Sparrow lived through a time of great change in the lives of queer people in the UK and by using his papers (which were left to All Souls in his will) Millie’s exhibition presented an insight into Sparrow’s personal experience of the 20th century, and the experiences of those he knew and corresponded with.   

Due to the nature of the materials exhibited, Millie’s project involved a certain amount of ‘crossing the floor’ from the realm of Library collections and delving into the College archive. Archival practice within Oxford colleges has historically often been haphazard and informal, which means that catalogues can be incomplete or that past sensitivity reviews (if they have been carried out at all) have led to overzealous access restrictions or a lack of any access restrictions whatsoever. These were problems Millie soon ran into: one box of the Sparrow material was restricted simply because, despite Sparrow’s sexuality being publicly known, it “concern[ed] homosexuality”. Fortunately, upon consultation with the College’s current archivists, the restrictions were altered, and Millie was able to access the material.  

Perhaps therein lies a concrete example of the value of Millie’s work. Instead of remaining uncatalogued or behind restricted access, queer experience and history has been made more visible, and awareness of the existence of these kinds of collections has been promoted. Millie’s ideas for the future of the exhibition involve potentially creating a permanent digital version, a longer-running physical exhibition, or using the material for outreach purposes in the library – so watch this space!   

Yasmeen Khan – The Rhodes less taken: approaches to ethical cataloguing in the former Rhodes House Library material

Written by Charlotte Edwards

Based in Resource Description, Yasmeen had the opportunity to navigate a unique and highly sensitive project. Years before her arrival, the department had received a collection of resources from the Rhodes House Library, mostly pertaining to 20th and 21st century African and Commonwealth Studies. As many of these items were completely uncatalogued, Yasmeen took on the task of getting as many of them onto the system through ethical cataloguing practice as she could.

A colourful selection of books and magazines laid out in a collage
Some of the Rhodes material

Due to the nature, content, and physical location of the material, Yasmeen had many things to consider when starting her project, such as:

  • A duty of care to readers – there are pictures, language, and references in these resources that can be distressing.
  • Library ethics – the material is not held in an ideal location at Osney, is not accessible to researchers, and has lots of confusing metadata that makes it difficult to catalogue.

The first step of Yasmeen’s project was learning to catalogue – not an easy feat! She then started experimenting with serials and monographs (both would be needed for the vast array of material she would encounter in this collection) and began researching ethical cataloguing, eventually pulling together a ‘Bodleian Cataloguing Code of Ethics’ based on her research.

Yasmeen’s real-life approach to cataloguing was not priority-based, as she proceeded in the order of what item was next on the pile. The records were full-level, the descriptive fields were left intact, and she altered subject headings if it was both necessary and possible. In a few cases, she also restricted access to items with graphic images – due to their nature, it was felt that these items should only be viewed in private areas in the reading rooms. An attendee asked Yasmeen at the end of her presentation how she herself dealt with the material she was seeing. Indeed, we often consider how a reader would react to the material, but not the staff encountering it. Yasmeen’s approach was to take time to be mentally prepared for what she might see, especially after being taken by surprise at the beginning. It was also beneficial that she would only work on this collection for a couple of hours per week and so could restrict her overall exposure.

There are limitations when cataloguing, especially when cataloguing a collection like this, and Yasmeen touched on her ‘Dream Approaches’ regarding ethical cataloguing. Ideally, rather than relying solely on individual cataloguers, ethical cataloguing would occur on multiple levels, such as having institutional cataloguing policies that are regularly reviewed to ensure alignment with ethical principles.

Due to the collection’s vastness, the comparatively low priority of the collection, and the lack of departmental guidelines on ethical cataloguing, the collection could not be fully catalogued by the end of Yasmeen’s traineeship. To combat this open-endedness, Yasmeen is proceeding to write a report for any future cataloguers who want to continue this well-thought out and important work.

Yasmeen’s presentation was a fascinating insight into the decisions that are made when cataloguing sensitive material, and as an audience member I found her presentation highly enlightening and engaging.

LGBTQ+ History Month at the Bodleian Law Library

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British LGBTQ+ history has an involved and often traumatic relationship to the Law. At the Bodleian Law Library (BLL), we’ve taken the opportunity to highlight some of those relationships through a display of our primary and secondary collections. In this post, we want to briefly touch on just a few pieces of legislation, currently on display or accessible on open shelf in the BLL, that were vital to the progression of LGBTQ+ rights in the UK, showing how the Law Library can be a key resource for studying its history.

Three books on display against the background of a rainbow flag
Physical copies of the Wolfenden Report, a Homosexual Law Reform Society annual report, and Peter Wildeblood’s memoir.

In 1954, Peter Wildeblood, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu and Michael Pitt-Rivers were convicted for “consensual homosexual offences” and sentenced to 12 to 18 months in prison. The trial invigorated a reform movement that triggered a Commons “committee on homosexual offences” that, in 1957, would publish the seminal Wolfenden Report, which advised that “‘Homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private be no longer a criminal offence”. The report was debated in parliament, but the government did not act on its recommendations, galvanising new organisations agitating for gay rights, such as the Homosexual Law Reform Society (a 1960s report of the Society is on display in the Law Library). Also in the Law Library, you can read the Wolfenden Report itself, as well as Wildeblood’s brave memoir Against the Law, which appeared in the same year.

Picture of a book display showing various primary and secondary resources related to LGBTQ+ history
Part of the LGBTQ+ History Month display at the Bodleian Law Library.

The library-held collections of historical and in-force statutes (such as Halsbury’s or online legal databases like Westlaw or Lexis+ subscribed to by the Bodleian – see the list of legal databases at Legal databases | Bodleian Libraries (ox.ac.uk); not quite as up to date but freely accessible to everyone is the government’s own Legislation.gov.uk) are a key source of LGBTQ+ history. In 1967, ten year after the recommendations in the Wolfenden report, the Sexual Offences Act finally decriminalised in-private sex between men over 21 (i.e. only a partial decriminalisation: the age of consent, moreover, was not equalised until 2000). Another key statute is the Gender Recognition Act 2004, which finally gave Trans people the legal right to full recognition of their gender (we also hold the 2018 parliamentary consultation material regarding its reform). And there is the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act of 2013, which legalised gay marriage, or the 2010 Equality Act, Britain’s key anti-discrimination legislation. All these laws have a direct impact on people’s daily lives and experiences, as well as our sense of what kind of society we are and/or want to be.

The BLL does not only hold the final product when it comes to legislation. In the Official Papers collection, the often fascinating (and not rarely disturbing) parliamentary history of LGBTQ+ – related legislation can be followed, for instance through the debate reports printed in Hansard (also online at https://hansard.parliament.uk/). From the first discussion of Lesbianism in parliament in 1921 (a Criminal Law Amendment bill, which would have criminalised all sex between women, was defeated in the House of Lords that year) to the long history of the repeal of the repressive section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 (which prohibited the so-called “promotion” of homosexuality by local authorities, inspiring the activism of Stonewall and OutRage!), readers can discover how House discussions and committee reports reflected (or not) debates, prejudices, advocacy and reform in wider society. Behind the glass of the main reading room, for instance, three volumes on display chart the repeal of section 28: from the 1988 introduction of the paragraph which offensively termed gay partnerships “pretended family relationships” into the 1986 Local Government Act, over the introduction of repeal in the Standing Committee stage of the 2003 Local Government Bill, to the eventual enactment of repeal in the Local Government Act 2003 (a government apology, however, did not follow until 2009).

Two statute books and a parliamentary committee report on display, resting on bookstands.
Tracing the repeal of Section 28 at the BLL

If you want to know more, a good first place to start is the Oxford LibGuide prepared by the Law Library: Home – LGBTI law – Oxford LibGuides at Oxford University. The secondary literature on display until the end of this month in the main reading room, moreover, highlights not only titles about the UK, but also the US, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. On the first floor of the library, in addition, there are extensive collections of statutes from Australia, Canada, India, and many other jurisdictions: on the first of February, for instance, we displayed the Canadian Civil Marriage Act, which legalised same-sex marriage in the country on that day in 2005 (on the same day in 2009, incidentally, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir became the prime minister of Iceland, and with it the world’s first openly gay head of government).

There are many more legal resources accessible through the library, either in physical form (such as reports on the trial of Oscar Wilde, notoriously convicted under the infamous Labouchère Amendment of the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, at KB65.ENG.WIL on the second floor), or in electronic form. As such, the library constitutes an excellent resource in remembering and making visible LGBTQ+ history, the constraints and repressions that the Law has inflicted, and the trajectory of its reform and the construction of anti-discrimination legislation.

 

Celebrating LGBT+ History Month at the Bodleian Libraries

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February is LGBT+ History Month. Across the Bodleian and college libraries, the Graduate Trainees have been hard at work creating displays that showcase a wide array of books which explore and celebrate LGBT+ history.

The Oxford Union Society Library

The Oxford Union Society’s LGBT+ History Month display explores LGBT+ history from across the world.

Homosexuality in ancient Greece is discussed through famous historical figures like Sappho, the romantic poet who is widely believed to have been lesbian (indeed, she lived on the Isle of Lesbos which is where the word “Lesbian” comes from),[1] and Ovid who wrote in his Art of Love that ‘a boy’s love appealed to me less’ – although this was later deliberately mistranslated as ‘a boy’s love appealed to me not at all’.[2] This censorship is not unusual, though amusingly some writers who translated Greek texts would translate the more risqué passages into Latin, thus counterintuitively highlighting the very sections they wanted obscured.[3]

Additionally, ancient Greek literature is used to explore LGBT history: Plato’s Symposium includes a brilliantly varied discussion of the origin of man in which Aristophanes, a comic, suggests that humans used to be two beings fused together, some male and female, others male and male and yet others female and female. These original humans were split in half by the angry gods and that is why we search for our “other half”.[4]

Transsexualism and homosexuality in various parts of Asia are also discussed:

  • In Mesopotamia, the deity of love and war, Ishtar, could be depicted as either male or female depending on what aspect of divinity the artist wished to portray. Ishtar’s male followers were even considered feminine and their sexual identity ‘in some way irregular’.[5]
  • The Hindu deity Lakshminarayan is a combination of two deities: male Vishnu and female Lakshmi. Similarly, the deity Ardhanarishvara represents the goddess Parvati and the god Shiva (who is romantic with Vishnu and even gives birth!).[6]
  • Japanese and Persian cultures are discussed through comparing Japanese samurai, who often had relationships with their pages and juniors and valued male love, with a similar practice in Persian royal courts.[7]

Modern British history, on the other hand, is filled with the poor treatment of LGBT+ people. In the 18th century homosexuality was a capital offence and the word “Molly” was used as a term of abuse towards flamboyant men.[8] In 1895, Oscar Wilde was tried for being gay and imprisoned in Reading gaol,[9] and in 1952 Alan Turing was discovered to be homosexual and charged with ‘gross indecency’ and chemically castrated.[10] Later in the 20th century, homosexuals were interrogated and discharged from the armed forces.[11] In fact, homosexuals were banned from British Armed Forces up until 2000.[12]

LGBT+ history is varied and fascinating. If you’d like to learn more about how it has been celebrated at the Oxford Union, check out the posts about the display for Transgender Awareness Week 2023 on Twitter and Facebook.

[1] R.B. Parkinson. 2013. A little gay history : desire and diversity across the world. 306.766 PAR

[2] Simon LeVay. 2012. Gay, straight, and the reason why : the science of sexual orientation. 155.3 LEV

[3] John Boswell. 1982. Christianity, social tolerance, and homosexuality : gay people in Western Europe from the beginning of the Christian era to the fourteenth century. 306.766 2 BOS

[4] Simon LeVay. 2012.

[5] R.B. Parkinson. 2013.

[6] Ibid

[7] Ibid

[8] Simon LeVay. 2012.

[9] Hugh David. 1997. On queer street : a social history of British homosexuality, 1895-1995. 306.766 DAV.

[10] Andrew Hodges. 1992. Alan Turing : the enigma. 510 HOD.

[11] Edmund Hall. 1995. We can’t even march straight : Homosexuality in the British Armed Forces. 306.766 094 1 HAL.

[12] Ministry of Defence, Cabinet Office, Office for Veterans’ Affairs, The Rt Hon Dr Andrew Murrison MP, The Rt Hon Johnny Mercer MP, The Rt Hon Rishi Sunak MP, and The Rt Hon Ben Wallace MP. 2023. ‘Government apologises to veterans for egregious historic LGBT policy in the Armed Forces: The PM and Defence Secretary apologise to LGBT personnel and veterans impacted by the historic ban.’ Gov.uk. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-apologises-to-veterans-for-egregious-historic-lgbt-policy-in-the-armed-forces

 Connie Hubbard

 

The Taylor Institution Library

A picture showing the Taylor Institution Library’s LGBT+ History Month display.

The study of LGBT+ history is a rapidly growing field in academia. This is reflected in Oxford University’s Centre for Gender, Identity and Subjectivity, as well as the LGBTQ+ History Faculty Network which runs fortnightly seminars and research sessions (@oulgbtqhistory). As for the Taylorian, we have a growing focus on gender and sexuality, not only on our ‘G.GEN’ marked shelves in the Main Reading Room and Research Collection but interspersed throughout our modern language and film collections.

While the official theme for this year’s LGBT+ History Month is ‘Medicine: Under the Scope’, we at the Taylor Library decided to stick to our subject specialisms of modern language and European history while putting together our display. As a result, we have two separate displays, a DVD display in the Teaching Collection and a display of our most recent acquisitions of LGBT+ history books in the Research Collection, to keep up to date with current scholarship.

The displays aim to present examples of the vast array of items the library has, from the history of coming out in Wales (A Little Gay History of Wales) and lesbian desire in nineteenth century Italy (Eccentricity and sameness: discourses on lesbianism and desire between women in Italy, 1860s-1930s), to histories of queerness in medieval French courts (Courtly and queer: deconstruction, desire, and medieval French literature) and anthologies of transgender historical scholarship. They are centred around uncovering lost historical narratives, whether that be because of scholarly neglect until relatively recently, or explicit attempts to erase the voices of those who did not “fit” within the heteronormative historical narrative. To recognise these voices, the display also contains the works of 19th and 20th century LGBT+ writers and artists. These include the likes of Renée Vivien, a lesbian Parisian poet whose childhood friend-turned-lover, Violet Shillito, is often evoked in her works such as this display’s A Crown of Violets. Another example you will find is that of Mário Cesariny, a surrealist artist and poet who left Portugal for the UK to escape persecution for his homosexuality. The Taylor recently held an exhibition of his work, which you can read about here. 

As for our DVD display, this aims to celebrate the impact and contribution of LGBT+ artists in cinema worldwide. The collection on display consists of films that were produced by LGBT+ directors and are a mix of early and more recent productions. From French historical drama such as Portrait of a Lady on Fire to South Korean thriller The Handmaiden, Swedish bildungsroman Show Me Love to Thai romance Tropical Malady, these award-winning productions all explore and celebrate the multifaceted experiences of those in the LGBT+ community. Overall, the displays reflect the purpose of LGBT+ History Month as a whole, to create safe and inclusive spaces for all readers and staff members at the Taylorian.

Reading List: Histoire de la Sexualité by Michel Foucault; The Transgender Studies Reader, ed. by Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle; Queer Genealogies in Transnational Barcelona, by Natasha Tanna; Derivas Del (Mal)decir, by José Javier Maristany; Queer Square Mile: Queer Short Stories from Wales, ed. by Kirsti Bohata et al.; Un Été Avec Colette, by Antoine Compagnon; Pena Capital by Mário Cesariny; A Crown of Violets, by Renée Vivien (trans. by Samantha Pious); Lesbian Decadence, by Nicole G. Albert; Peripheral Desires: The German Discovery of Sex by Robert Deam Tobin; A Little Gay History of Wales by Daryle Leeworthy; Eccentricity and Sameness, by Charlotte Ross; Public City/Public Sex, by Andrew Israel Ross.

DVD List: Tropical Malady, directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul; Show Me Love, by Lukas Moodysson; Happy Together, by Wong Kar-Wai; Tomboy, by Céline Sciamma; A Fantastic Woman, by Sebastián Lelio; Portrait of a Lady on Fire, by Céline Sciamma; The Handmaiden, by Park Chan-Wook.

Clara Oxley

 

English Faculty Library

This year for LGBT+ month, the EFL has decided to do something a little bit different for its Book Display. Under the capable hands of Sophie, our Reader Services Senior Library Assistant, and in collaboration with the LGBTQ+ Campaign, the EFL put out a call to its readers to help co-curate this month’s display. Our readers were asked to submit their favourite queer book with a short blurb on why they chose it. Needless to say, we were blown away by the response!

10 people took the time out of their day to send in a suggestion, and it was wonderful to see how varied the responses were. Here’s a sample of some of the choices and a taste of why they were chosen:

  • Loveless by Alice Oseman, a contemporary coming-out novel with an aro-ace protagonist. In the anonymous nominee’s words, it’s about ‘the multitude of ways that love can be defined’
  • Ready to Catch him Should he Fall by Neil Bartlett which nominee Jasper described as ‘[capturing] the horror and grief of the 80s AIDS crisis’
  • And (of course) classics such as The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, in which nominee Isaac highlighted how ‘with the lens afforded to a modern queer man, the homosexual repression jumps off the page’.

A full reading list can be found below if you’re interested!

It has been fascinating to see how different the responses are, and to see what exactly our readers are reading in their own words – particularly as queer voices have been (and are still being) silenced. In the spirit of allowing people their own voice, I’ve asked Sophie to write a few words of her own about the display:

“The idea for the collaborative display between the English Faculty Library and the SU LGBTQ+ Campaign was first raised by student reps  earlier this academic year, who expressed an interest in the library having a display for Trans Awareness Week back in November (which we did!). The LGBT+ History Month display was a natural follow-up from this, and couldn’t have been made without the help of the SU LGBTQ+ Campaign, who reached out to their connections and collected suggestions from the student body. This has helped us to create a display where Oxford’s LGBTQ+ community can talk about their history, experiences, and literature in their own words.”

This display will be on at the EFL for the entirety of LGBTQ+ History Month until March 4th 2024, so we highly encourage you to see it in person! If you’re unable to make it to the EFL though, a virtual display will be being posted onto the EFL Blog later this month so do keep an eye out.

Reading List: Gender Trouble by Judith Butler; The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde; Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan le Fanu; After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz; Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier; Hauntings and Other Fantastic Tales by Vernon Lee; Loveless by Alice Oseman; Gallathea by John Lyly; Tales of the City by Armistead Mapuin; Ready to Catch him Should he Fall by Neil Bartlett

Leah Brown

New College Library

A picture showing New College Library’s LGBT+ History Month display.New College Library’s book display for LGBT+ History Month draws from our extensive Gender and Sexuality collection, a section of the library dedicated to books which explore and amplify LGBT+ peoples’ lives, voices, identities, and experiences, both historically and in the present day. I also identified some exciting new titles which we acquired for the library.

In honour of this year’s theme, ‘Medicine – #UnderTheScope’, the display includes books which explore LGBT+ people’s experiences of and contributions to healthcare and medicine. David France’s How to Survive a Plague, which was based on the 2012 documentary he directed of the same name, provides a raw and powerful social and scientific history of AIDS. France spotlights the vital work of activists of all genders who were the driving force behind the development of life-saving drugs for the management of HIV. Also on display is The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes by Zoë Playdon. This book chronicles the life of Scottish nobleman Ewan Forbes, a transgender man, and the 1968 court case regarding the inheritance of his baronetcy. Drawing on the fields of medicine, psychology, biology, and law, Playdon provides the first analysis of this little-known event in LGBT+ history, drawing on records that had been suppressed until very recently.

Other books on display in New College Library this year explore a variety of different aspects of LGBT+ history, reflecting something of the range of different experiences, voices, and identities. Dr Kit Heyam’s monograph Before We Were Trans, for example, moves widely through time and space proposing a broader concept of trans history which encompasses everyone ‘doing fascinating, creative, messy things with gender’. Other books on display include a history of the Stonewall uprising in America and the imposition, repeal, and legacy of Section 28 in Britain, alongside explorations of the culture, history, and science of bisexuality and asexuality.

The display has proved really popular, and readers have borrowed several of the books which we have replaced on the display with others from our collection. There are so many amazing new releases in the field of LGBT+ studies, and I am keen to support in the acquisition of more of these books for the library.

Reading List: David France, How to Survive a Plague: The Story of How Activists and Scientists Tamed AIDS (London: Picador, 2017); Zoë Playdon, The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes: The Transgender Trial that Threatened to Upend the British Establishment (London: Bloomsbury, 2022); Kit Heyam, Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender (London: Basic Books, 2022); Martin B, Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBTQ Rights Uprising that Changed America (New York: Plume, 2019); Paul Baker, Outrageous! The Story of Section 28 and Britain’s Battle for LGBT Education (London: Reaktion Books, 2022); Julia Shaw, Bi: The Hidden Culture, History, and Science of Bisexuality (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2023); Angela Chen, Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex (Boston: Beacon Press, 2020).

Jessica Hodgkinson

History Faculty Library

A picture showing the History Faculty Library’s LGBT+ History Month display

At the HFL, a former trainee has put together a display of books covering a wide range of LGBT+ history.

For those keen to delve into this year’s theme of “Under the Scope” and explore how LGBT+ people have experienced and contributed to medicine and healthcare, there are titles such as How to survive a plague: the inside story of how citizens and science tamed AIDS, which tells the story of activists and medics fighting to find a solution to the AIDS crisis.

Looking more broadly at LGBT+ history, there are a number of titles which make a deep dive into British queer history, such as Same-sex sexuality in later medieval English culture, A lesbian history of Britain: love and sex between women since 1500 and Queer voices in post-war Scotland: male homosexuality, religion and society. Or why not venture further from home with Red closet: the hidden history of gay oppression in the USSR or Stonewall: the definitive story of the LGBTQ rights uprising that changed America?

And if you’re not able to come into the Radcliffe Camera in person there is a selection of suggested digital titles, ranging from the broad – such as The Routledge history of queer America – to the highly specific Plane queer: labor, sexuality, and AIDS in the history of male flight attendants.

Reading List:

Tomboys and bachelor girls: a lesbian history of post-war Britain 1945-71

Britannia’s glory: a history of twentieth-century lesbians

Let the record show: a political history of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993

Before AIDS: gay health politics in the 1970s

Before we were trans: a new history of gender

Queer public history: essays on scholarly activism

The shape of sex: nonbinary gender from Genesis to the Renaissance

Same-sex sexuality in later medieval English culture

A little gay history: desire and diversity across the world

Outrageous!: the story of Section 28 and Britain’s battle for LGBT education

Sapphistries: a global history of love between women

Bi: the hidden culture, history and science of bisexuality

Journal of the history of sexuality (Online)

Seeing sodomy in the Middle Ages

GLQ (online)

Xanthe Malcolm

Promoting an Exhibition

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One of the exciting projects we can get involved in as trainees is preparing for and promoting library exhibitions, whether open to the public or exclusively to university staff and students. For LGBT+ History Month, New College Library will be putting on an exhibition on Queer Love & Literature in our collections on 25th February. We have a display case in the main library for small, longer-term exhibitions of about ten items, accessible to college members only. However, this is not suitable for large exhibitions like this one. We therefore book a room in college with enough space for long tables, which also allows us to open our exhibitions to the public. The downside is the room is not secure enough to leave any of our rare books and manuscripts overnight, therefore our large exhibitions are open for one day and one day only! This involves a lot of preparation to make sure we can set up and take down the exhibition as quickly and securely as possible on the day.

Exhibition in Lecture Room 4

 

However, without people coming to see our wonderful collections, all our preparation would be in vain. For this exhibition, we’ve used some successful promotion tactics from our previous exhibitions as well as some new ones to usher as many people as possible through our doors on the day. First of all is the fun bit, designing a poster for the exhibition on Canva, with a uniform logo we’re using on all of our social media channels. We then sent the design off to a print company to have it printed in A2, A3, and A4. We “launched” the news of our upcoming exhibition on the 19th January on our social media, and sent an email out to the OLIS, Oxford Libraries Information System, mail list. I also changed our Twitter and Facebook profile headers to advertisements for the exhibition. Thanks to my fellow trainees, I sent out some posters to go up in other libraries and increase awareness of the exhibition throughout the university. I also go on a wander around college putting up posters in common areas such as the café/bar and the JCR. I’m also trialling some QR codes, linked to the event page on our website, displayed around the library.  The LGBTQ+ Officers for the college’s JCR and MCR do a great job of organising their own events throughout the year such as queer drinks and LGBTQ+ formals, so we let them know about our exhibition so they can spread the word around college.

QR Codes around the Library

Designing the Exhibition Poster

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As our exhibition is for LGBT+ History Month, a campaign founded by Schools OUT to increase the visibility of queer people’s histories and experiences, we added our event to their public calendar. However, we’ve found social media is the most effective method to reach a wider audience outside just New College and the University. On our Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, we’ve been further teasing our exhibition by posting some of the items we’ll be displaying on the day with our exhibition banner underneath to make sure our followers don’t get sick of the same poster over and over again. I have scheduled a sneaky motion graphic to go out in the week before the exhibition, just to add a little spice. We also asked the Lodge to let us put a poster in an A-frame outside the college entrance on Holywell Street on the day to draw in any walk-ins and notify visitors where the exhibition actually is, as New College can be a bit of a maze. We’re quite lucky that our collections speak for themselves, including a 15th-century manuscript copy of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, early printed books relating to King James VI and I, Oscar Wilde’s Ravenna inscribed by the author, and a first-edition copy of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. There might be a few surprise additions on the day as we continue compiling the labels, but we’re hoping to show at least 30 items of queer literature.

@newcollegelibrary Instagram Feed

Motion Graphic

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’re quite a small library and our exhibitions only last one day, so we don’t have the same resources and following to generate as much hype as some larger libraries’ incredible exhibitions, such as those at the British or Bodleian libraries, but we try our best! We’re also looking into putting on online exhibitions, so that our collections can be viewed digitally for longer, as it’s a shame they’re only on display for 6 hours at a time. This is the first of our exhibitions that we’ve put in this much work to promote, particularly on social media, so only time will tell if it works.

 

 

Trans Awareness Week at New College Library

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Here at New College Library, we put on a number of different book displays each term, ranging from new acquisitions that catch our eye, to showcasing certain awareness campaigns. This week it’s Trans Awareness Week, in which the trans community and its allies highlight the issues faced by trans, non-binary and gender-diverse people, and celebrate those raising awareness. This annual week of observance will culminate in Transgender Day of Remembrance on Sunday, to honour the memory of those whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence. In light of this week-long campaign for trans issues, I pulled together a display of books from our ‘Q’ shelfmark, set up a few years ago by a former trainee, comprised of LGBTQ+ histories, biographies, and fictional works. With so many interesting titles, I thought I’d take the opportunity to showcase a few of my favourite reads!

 

 

Juliet Jacques, Trans: A Memoir

This memoir by writer and filmmaker, Juliet Jacques, explores the personal story of her transition, while also critiquing 1990s and 2000s trans theory, literature and film. Jacques narrates her journey of self-discovery, giving an in-depth account of her entry into the LGBTQ+ community and her struggles with her identity; ‘I felt trapped not by my body, but by a society that didn’t want me to modify it.’ From her earliest experimentation with her presentation, we learn how films, books, and music that focus on trans identities helped Jacques explore and come to terms with her own identity. In 2012, Jacques chronicled her sex reassignment surgery in the Guardian, hoping to educate others on the harsh reality of transitioning and the importance of trans rights. Jacques’ memoir combines the personal with the political, exploring controversial issues in trans politics and promising to redefine our understanding of contemporary trans lives.

 

 

Jen Manion, Female Husbands: A Trans History

In this dynamic LGBTQ+ history, Jen Manion uncovers the stories of ‘female husbands’, a term from the 18th and 19th centuries that referred to female-assigned individuals who lived as men and married women. Manion recounts the stories of these queer pioneers, who exposed themselves to media sensationalism and, at worst, violence or threat of punishment. Rejecting the notion that reclaiming transness in the past is ahistorical, Manion refuses to define the gender identity of these ‘female husbands’, among them Charles Hamilton, George Johnson, Frank Dubois, walking the line between recovery and historicization. It is precisely this complexity that makes this such a powerful read, forcing us to challenge modern binaries of gender and sexuality as we retrace the histories of our queer ancestors.

 

Christine Burns, Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows

Through a number of very personal stories, this book retraces the journey of the trans community in Britain from the margins of society to the visible phenomenon we recognise today. In their own words, trans rights advocates tell the story of the fight for their rights in the face of overwhelming opposition, and it is impossible not to respect their determination. For those interested in the current ongoing discussions about trans rights, this book is an excellent resource, despite being a difficult read at times.

 

Kai Cheng Thom, Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir

This surrealist novel tells the story of a young, unnamed, transgender woman who lives with other trans women on the Street of Miracles, where different kinds of sex work take place. In response to the murder of another trans woman, the others form a vigilante gang and start attacking men on the street. Kai Cheng Thom herself is a non-binary transgender woman, who, as a writer and poet, exaggerates people from her life as characters in her work. As a response to the trope of transgender memoirs educating cisgender individuals about trans lives, Thom instead wrote Fierce Femmes to be the book that would have best helped her as a transgender teenager.

 

 

 

Celebrating LGBTQ+ History Month Across the Libraries

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For LGBTQ+ History Month, a selection of the trainees (alongside the St Antony’s Apprentice Library Assistant) have come together to share how LGBTQ+ History is represented across the libraries. Between displays and notable books, libraries provide an important place to learn and reflect on the progress and successes the community has achieved.

LGBTQ+ History Month Banner

Jess Ward and Josie Fairley Keast, Law Library

The Law Library’s LGBTQ+ History Month Display

A snapshot of the LGBTQ+ History Month display at the Law Library [pictured excerpt: Sexual Offences Act 1956]

For LGBTQ+ History Month, Jess has put together ‘A [Brief] History of LGBTQ+ Rights in England.’ On display from the library’s physical collection are the Sexual Offences Act 1956 and the 1967 Amendment, the Gender Recognition Act 2007, and the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, with many other examples from the sixteenth century to the present day summarised and cited. The book display traces the progress that has been made since the first mentions of LGBTQ+ individuals in English law, but also highlights some of the issues still facing members of the community today.

The introductory text to the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, on display at the Law Library

Yoshino, Kenji. Covering : The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights. New York: Random House, 2006.
KM208.U4.YOS 2006

Yoshino, Kenji. Covering : The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights. New York: Random House, 2006.

Outside of actual legislation, another recommendation is Kenji Yoshino’s 2006 memoir Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights. This book intertwines legal scholarship and social history with Yoshino’s lived experiences as a gay Asian-American man, reflecting on the state of civil rights and identity politics in mid-2000s America.

“I surfaced back into my life. I made decisions with persuasive efficiency. I chose the American passport over the Japanese one, the gay identity over the straight one, law school over English graduate school. The last two choices were connected. I decided on law school in part because I had accepted my gay identity. A gay poet is vulnerable in profession as well as person. I refused that level of exposure. Law school promised to arm me with a new language, a language I did not expect to be elegant or moving but that I expected to be more potent, more able to protect me. I have seen this bargain many times since – in myself and others – compensation for standing out along one dimension by assimilating along others.” (Covering, p. 12)

Find the book.

Izzie Salter, Sackler Library

Venegas, Luis. The C*ndy Book of Transversal Creativity : The Best of C*ndy Transversal Magazine, Allegedly. New York, 2020.
TR681.T68 C36 CAN 2020

‘On the pages of C*NDY Transversal, [Luis Venegas] acknowledged queerness in fashion, highlighted people all-but-forgotten in LGBTQ history, and introduced an audience to up-and-comers who were changing the landscape of music, runway, and trans culture – and he did it with a glamorous twist. C*NDY was beautiful.’ (p.44)

In 2009, Spanish independent publisher Luis Venegas launched the first issue of C*NDY Transversal Magazine. C*NDY set out to create ‘something like a trans vogue’, celebrating everything ‘transversal’. In Venegas’ own words, this encapsulates trans, gender non-conforming, non-binary and androgynous people, as well as ‘male and female impersonators and drag queens’ – all whom he believes ‘basically break the outdated rules of gender’. Since the first publication, C*NDY has developed a cult following and grown in traction. Later issues have featured renowned LGBTQ+ celebrities such as Miley Cyrus, Laverne Cox, Janet Mock, and Lady Gaga. However, each issue goes beyond the celebrity: they are filled with portraits of trans rights activists, drag stars, androgynous models, LGBTQ+ embraces.

Venegas, Luis. The C*ndy Book of Transversal Creativity : The Best of C*ndy Transversal Magazine, Allegedly. New York, 2020.

The Very Best of C*NDY Transversal Magazine, Allegedly is a collection of some of C*NDY’s most iconic spreads. Highlights include model Connie Fleming posing as Michelle Obama, headshots inspired by Candy Darling, and a letter to Venegas from a young transgender fan (p. 251). The latter is particularly significant, a reminder of the importance of celebrating LGBTQ+ people and expression in the past and present.

Readers can enjoy these highlights on glossy pages – akin to the magazine itself – and also read quotes from those who are featured. Many of these offer real insight into the importance of C*NDY, with contributors sharing their appreciation for the visibility it provided. Meanwhile, many quotes are punchy quips about gender expression and identity. These combine to make a book of boldness, of beauty, and aspiration.

Venegas has made it clear that – whilst books dedicated to identity beyond the binary are immensely important – C*NDY does not attempt to discuss the achievements of the LGBTQ+ community. C*NDY is instead ‘a project for all’, in particular ‘anyone who felt othered by their freedom of expression’. It is about fashion, makeup, and hair, in a landscape that goes beyond the gender binary. This is a welcome space of indulgence, through the prism of LGBTQ+ identity.

Find the book.

Sophie Lay, English Faculty Library 

Serano, Julia. Whipping Girl : A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. Second ed. Berkeley, 2016.
HQ77.9 SER 2016

Serano, Julia. Whipping Girl : A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. Second ed. Berkeley, 2016. [in the English Faculty Library, in front of the Transgender pride flag and the LGBT pride flag]

A foundational text in transfeminism, Whipping Girl by the biologist Julia Serano is available to loan from the English Faculty Library. The book is described in its tagline as “a transsexual woman on sexism and the scapegoating of femininity”.

The copy we have at the EFL is actually the second edition, which was published in 2016 (10 years after the original). In that time, the book has become a key text (not, Serano notes, the only perspective!) on discussions surrounding gender, queer theory, and feminism. However, as the author says herself in the preface to the second edition: “While the major themes that I forward in Whipping Girl remain just as vital and relevant today as they were when I was first writing the book, some of the specific descriptions and details will surely seem increasingly dated as time marches on.” (p.X).

Despite this, I found myself drawn to discussing the book during LGBTQ+ History Month because of how important this text has become. One of the key elements of this collection of essays and slam poetry is its conception of trans-misogyny: the dangerous blend of both oppositional and traditional sexism (Serano’s phrases), as well as the fact this this book is credited for the popularisation of cis terminology (e.g. cisgender, cissexual, cissexism, etc.). Another important highlight for me is a staunch defence of femininity, and an examination of both the derision of the feminine and accusations of its superficiality and performativity.

It’s hard for me to go too much deeper into the issues of the book without simply parroting all of Serano’s ideas, so I’ll leave off with a quote from the introduction that I believe provides a good baseline for the book:

“One thing that all forms of sexism share – whether they target females, queers, transsexuals, or others – is that they all begin with placing assumptions and value judgements onto other people’s gendered bodies and behaviours.” (p.8)

Find the book.

Eleanor Winterbottom, St Antony’s College Library

St Antony’s College Library LGBTQ+ History Month Display

At St Antony’s College library our collection covers a wide range of material on the social sciences, international politics, economics, anthropology, history, and culture. This means we were quite spoilt for choice when selecting material for LGBTQ+ history month! When creating our display, we wanted to make sure we showcased the best of what our collection has to offer on this subject and draw attention to the ways LGBTQ+ history is interconnected with, and relevant to, so many different areas of study.

St Antony’s College Library Display on LGBTQ+ History Month

Our display includes material that talks more broadly about the economic, political and international aspects of LGBTQ+ history, such as M.V. Lee Badgett’s the Economic Case for LGBT Equality and Cynthia Weber’s Queer International Relations, to material that focuses on the experience of the individual like Amrou Al-Kadhi’s Life as a Unicorn. We also wanted to ensure that our material covered history and culture from multiple parts of the world, so we have included books on LGBTQ+ history in China, Russia, the US, Africa, Latvia, the UK, India, and more.

Creating this display has been a fascinating and inspiring experience. The vast amount literature written about LGBTQ+ history from multiple areas of study just goes to show how important this history is when it comes to gaining a better understanding of the world and the human experience. It is crucial that we continue to showcase and celebrate LGBTQ+ voices, stories, and history, and I look forward to seeing our LGBTQ+ history collection grow and flourish in the future!

Books referenced:

Badgett, M.V.L. (2020) The economic case for LGBT equality: why fair and equal treatment benefits us all. Beacon Press, Boston.

Weber, C. (2016) Queer international relations: sovereignty, sexuality and the will to knowledge. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Al-Kadhi, A. (2020) Life as a unicorn: a journey from shame to pride and everything in between. 4th Estate, London.

 

A Day in the Life (St Edmund ‘Teddy’ Hall Library)

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The stone Norman church of Teddy Hall Library, with snowdrops in the graveyard in front.
Snow drops outside St Edmund Hall Library

As a College Library trainee my days can vary a lot. During term time our Library is always busy, with students coming in and out all day (literally – we are open 24/7) to study, to find and borrow books, and to make use of our other Library services – such as our wide selection of borrowable board games!

As I’m writing this it is fourth week – almost half way through term! This is a pretty typical term time day, though with more chocolate than is normal…

9am – Sorting, Shelving, Socials

I start by scanning my own and the shared Library email inboxes for anything which needs urgent attention. I’m part of a team of three here at Teddy Hall (me – Heather, Emma – Assistant Librarian, and James – Librarian); we all share responsibility for monitoring the Library inbox and responding to queries which come in there. I then process the returns which come in overnight. In the middle of term there are rarely huge piles of books: I’d guess around 20 each morning.

Next I turn to our Click and Collect requests. The Library started offering this during 2020 to support students who were in isolation but needed to access books from the Library. Students submit a request either via email or SOLO (the University’s book-finding-website – literally, Search Oxford Libraries Online), and we find the book and deliver it either to their pigeon hole or directly to their room. Then it’s time for some shelving! I actually find shelving books a nice way to start the day: there is something very grounding about sorting everything into its rightful place. Shelving also gives me a chance to have a walk around the Library and do some general tidying – I’ll also check there is paper in the printer, free period products in the bathroom, pens in the pen pot, and staples in the stapler.

My final morning task is to check the Library social media accounts: Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. I’ll check whether we have any planned content to go out today, or which I need to prepare for later in the week.

Preparing a Blind Date…

10am – Blind Date with a Book

On Monday this week (7 Feb 2022) we launched Blind Date with a Book – Teddy Hall students, staff and Fellows request a book, telling us a little bit about what they like to read, and we set them up with something we think they’ll love. To celebrate Valentine’s Day and LGBTQIA+ History Month, we are selecting books with themes of gender, sexuality, and romance. Blind Date is always extremely popular, and on Monday alone we had 15 requests! This morning Emma, James and I shared ideas for what to give people who had requested books from poetry, to fantasy fiction, to a humorous and fun-to-read non-fiction. This is a really fun part of the day, and I inevitably end up with a list of books I want to read!

We wrap the books, affix a Valentine’s chocolate to the cover, and pop them in pigeon holes to await their dates…

11am – Desk Duty

I enjoy sitting at the Issue Desk, as I can help students with any queries they may have. Sometimes this can feel a bit like detective work! For example, today a student came to the desk with two items on her reading list which she and her classmates were struggling to find. The only information provided was an author name, a date, and a mysterious acronym… After some SOLO-searching, some googling and some guess work I found both articles – one of which we had in a physical book in the library. If you’re interested, the acronyms were the names of the journals in which the articles were published! Students are always really grateful for any help you can give, and so even when I feel stumped, I remember that any progress I can make in searching something out is time saved for them, and that is a good thing.

12.30pm – Lunch

You may have heard it before, but it’s worth reading again: college library jobs mean a free college lunch. These are consistently yummy, and because we all eat together, lunch in college is a really great way to chat to the rest of the Library team and also to other college staff. Today this chat covered the important topics of planetariums, dodgy ideas for fusion food, and Cadbury World.

1.30pm – Books, Books, Books

By lunchtime we’ve usually had some new books delivered, which I’ll collect from Porter’s Lodge and process. As these are often student requests, I will then almost immediately take the books back to the Lodge to put them in student pigeon holes!

Blackwell’s Book Shop – photo: juliasbookcase.com/blog/blackwellsoxford

2pm – Book Shopping (yes, seriously) 

One of the best parts of my job is going to Blackwell’s for books. We are so lucky to have Blackwell’s as a resource and it is just a short walk from Teddy Hall, so when we can, we buy our books directly from there. This also means we can turn any requests around as quickly as possible! Today, as well as picking up a student request I am keeping my eyes open for anything which might be a great Blind Date book! I do find a personal favourite lock down read of mine: Mackenzi Lee’s The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue. As it’s a LGBTQIA+ love story, a Teddy Hall Blind Date requester should be expecting this in their pigeon hole soon!

3pm – Ticking off Tasks

This afternoon I’m sat up in my office, working on some ongoing tasks. This week I’ve got three balls which I am juggling. First, I’m preparing a book display and blog post celebrating International Day of Women and Girls in Science by showcasing the work of our own college Fellows.

Second, I am working through a donation of books we received over Christmas vacation – over 2,500 of them! When they arrived, we spread the books out over the thankfully-student-free desks and then organised them roughly into subjects, before putting what we could onto available shelves. The rest were boxed up and are currently living at the very top of the Teddy Hall Library tower…! We have started making lists of the books in the donation, and will decide what we want to keep and what we will offer to other libraries. If it’s a quiet day during term I might spend some time on this, but mostly this will get picked up properly again at Easter.

Third, I am planning my own Trainee project. As part of the Traineeship, we all work on an individual project which we then present about at the end of the year. My project is all about making the Library more sustainable… I’m really looking forward to working on this – so watch this space!

5pm – “Home” Time

One of the best things about living in Oxford is just how much there is to do in the city – and I love to take full advantage of that! From catching up with the other Trainees for a drink, to attending a seminar about medieval culture (I did a Masters in Medieval English Literature!), to meeting friends for dinner, or playing in orchestra (optional seminars and orchestra?! Yes – I am a bit of a nerd), Oxford is a great place to be. And there is loads to do which won’t break the bank! Today, though, it’s straight home for a hot chocolate and to continue reading Ali Smith’s wonderful book ‘Spring’.

LGBTQ+ Month @ the Sainsbury Library

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February is LGBTQ+ month and I’ve been putting together a display to celebrate LGBTQ+ in business for the Sainsbury Library. As always happens when digging into it, the past has proven more lively, varied, and knit with the present than expected. The pace of change is remarkable even knowing to expect it, and over the three decades covered here it is also mostly positive change. I hope you find it inspires you a little as it does me.

The books are presented as a timeline from left to right.

Top Row (1990s):

1991 – The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life – Kenneth J. Gergen. Social psychologist Kenneth J. Gergen is an example of academic ally-ship whose work at the start of the 1990s is as sophisticated as current ideas in its approach to LGBTQ+ issues. Although not an overtly queer work, The Saturated Self constructs a theory of modern identity that makes room for and obliges the legitimacy of LGBTQ+ identities. His work on The Social Construction and The Transformation of Identity Politics was also remarkably prescient in 1999 about where the discourse around these questions would go and how it would change in the subsequent two decades.

1994 – Ivan Massow’s Gay Finance Guide. In the UK during the 1990s Ivan Massow was able to use both a new, growing acceptance of homosexuals in  public life and their continued stereotyping to his advantage. His London advisory firm completely changed the conversation around gay clients in the insurance industry, who during the AIDs epidemic were being shut out by discriminatory premiums. Off the back of this success he entered politics, shocking many of his left-leaning clientele by calling the Conservative party “the gayest party in Europe”, and was determined to change it from within. While he was briefly close to the Thatcher leadership, by the early 2000s his business was in danger of collapse and Massow agreed to become an agent for Zurich. The legal fall-out after Massow claimed Zurich refused to cover most of his clients almost bankrupted him.

1995 – The Apartheid of Sex: A Manifesto on the Freedom of Gender – Martine Rothblatt. Rothblatt is the founder and chairwoman of the board of United Therapeutics, making her the highest earning CEO in the biopharmaceutical industry. Written the year after Rothblatt’s gender reassignment surgery and as a prelude to beginning her PhD in medical ethics with a  specialisation in xenotransplantation, The Apartheid of Sex not only argued for a continuum of gender from both biological and sociological grounds before the idea gained public prominence but also laid the groundwork for Rothblatt’s current radical arguments for high levels of financial and social investment in transhumanism.

1997 – Homo Economics: Capitalism, Community, and Lesbian and Gay Life – Amy Gluckman and Betsy Reed. Gluckman and Reed’s Homo Economics was the first thorough account of the relationship between gay people and the market. Drawing on experts in journalism, activism, academia, the arts, and public policy, it fully contextualised the state of mixed progress contemporary LGBTQ+ groups find themselves in as well as highlighting its fragility, demonstrating how both the continuation of modern capitalism in its current form and the looming threats of reduced social investment frustrate the LGBTQ+ movement in different ways.

2000 – Selling Out: The Gay and Lesbian Movement Goes to the Market – Alexandrea Chasin. Selling Out is an accessible, personal, agitative work that blends the academic and vox pop elements of works like Homo Economics and charted what effect the “embrace” of consumerism and capital was having on the LGBTQ+ community. An associate professor of literary studies at The Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts, Chasin charts what had been gained and what had been lost in the mainstreaming of the LGBTQ+ movement, as well as what she feared and hoped might happen in the coming decade.

Middle Row (2000s):

2002 – The Pink Pages: The Gay and Lesbian Business and Services Directory. As with numerous previous marginalised groups, the LGBTQ+ community created guides to allow safe navigation through a world that was inherently hostile to them. As acceptance grew, a flurry of travel guides appeared in more public forms. Acting as the name suggests (a Yellow Pages for the queer community) The Pink Pages still operates as a list of ally tradespeople. Now replaced by pinkpagesonline and similar sites, this 2002 copy of the directory was the only print edition.

2005 – Business Not Politics: The Making of the Gay Market – Katherine Sender. In this work Katherine Sender, a professor in the Department of Communication and the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Cornell University, refutes two major pieces of conventional wisdom in this work. 1 – that the LGBTQ+ community exists independently of how it is marketed to, and 2 – that LGBTQ+ marketing exists independently of political action around that community. Sender shows how marketing as a form of media has helped construct the community as well as increased visibility for its members, while also inherently creating restrictions in its definition.

2006 – The G Quotient – Kirk Snyder. As inclusion and diversity of all kinds was gaining ground not just as a political and moral orientation but also as a strength of modern teams, Kirk Snyder followed up his 2003 Career Guide for the Gay Community with this work arguing that gay men were making the best managers precisely because their gay lives meant they understood inclusion and diversity best. Snyder’s work is focused around what the business community can learn from the LGBTQ+ community to change itself, rather than change them.

2008 – Queer Economics, A Reader – Joyce Jacobsen and Adam Zeller. Jacobsen and Zeller’s collection of academic works includes extracts from Homo Economics, recontextualised a decade later. Queer Economics presents the results of that intellectual provocation, and its movement into areas of demography, labour markets, consumer representation, political economy, and economic history.

2008 – Opportunities and Challenges of Workplace Diversity: Theory, Cases and Exercises – Kathryn A Cañas. Cañas began editing Opportunities and Challenges of Workplace Diversity in 2008 and new editions were produced until 2014. Cañas works as a member of the Management Department in the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah, where she has helped shape the department since 1999, incorporating changes in attitudes towards diversity including towards the LGBTQ+ community. Opportunities and Challenges has been a core-text internationally for courses in Diversity, Organizational Behavior, and Human Resource Management Diversity and the Workplace.

Lower Row (2010s):

2014 – The Glass Closet: Why Coming Out is Good Business – John Browne. Browne was chief executive of BP between 1995 and 2007 and was known as the “sun king” by employees due to BP’s increased interest in renewables under his leadership. Having started his career as an apprentice with BP in 1966, his time as it’s CEO ended acrimoniously when allegations were printed in 2007 by the Mail on Sunday that he had mis-used company funds to support a partner during and after their relationship. Having fought injunctions to stop the allegations being published, Browne resigned. He described later that what “terrified” him was not the financial scandal or potential early retirement, but that his sexuality would become public knowledge. By the time he wrote The Glass Closet Browne was advocating for a wide-spread, top-down corporate policy of LGBTQ+ inclusiveness as proposed by Snyder in 2006.

2015 – Queer Business: Queering Organisation Sexualities – Nick Rumens. Queer Business took the thoroughly business-minded approach of seeing opportunity in problems. He identifies that, despite the developments over the past 25 years, there is a continued lack of association between business studies and LGBTQ+ issues when compared to other areas of scholarship, but argues that there are potential positives to this situation. Rumens describes management and organisational studies as a field in which queer theory may make new advances, and as an area where it “has yet to become exhausted and clichéd”.

2016 – Inclusive Leadership: The Definitive Guide to Developing and Executing an Impactful Diversity and Inclusion Strategy – Charlotte Sweeney and Fleur Bothwick. Charlotte Sweeney Associates launched in 2012 as inclusion, diversity, and equality consultant specialists, following a 20-year career in the finance sector for Sweeney. Fleur Bothwick is Director of Diversity and Inclusion at multinational firm Ernst & Young. She received an OBE in 2013 for services to Diversity and Inclusion in the workplace. Sweeney received the same in 2017 for services to Women and Equalities. A follow-up to Inclusive Leadership, which won the Chartered Management Institute’s Book of the Year 2016, is expected in 2020.

2019 – Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level – Leander Kahney. Tim Cook is routinely cited as the most powerful LGBTQ+ leader in business. In 2014 he was the first Fortune 500 chief executive to come out as gay – a remarkable contrast to Browne’s experience just 7 years prior. While before coming out Cook was not overt in his support of the LGBTQ+ struggle, he has since admitted that in valuing his privacy he “was valuing it too far above what I could do for other people, so I wanted to tell everyone my truth” and ensure LGBTQ+ youth knew that he had relied on the work of people who had fought for their rights before him.

2019 – The Queering of Corporate America: How Big Business Went from LGBT Adversary to Ally – Carlos A. Ball. Covering street protests and boycotts during the 1970s, AIDS activism directed at pharmaceutical companies in the 1980s, and the push for corporate non-discrimination policies and domestic partnership benefits in the 1990s, Ball describes how LGBTQ+ activism has changed the business community’s understanding and treatment of the queer community. This is the current way the history of these two groups is being described and it’s vital to consider it in context of the works that have preceded it.

 

For more information about the month’s celebrations visit https://lgbtplushistorymonth.co.uk/