Transgressing National Boundaries in Queer History (Teaching) and Why We Need It

Teaching queer history is still seen as a novelty in curricula in the USA and even more so in Europe. Apart from the homophobic reactions that it has provoked, the history of sexuality has often been expected to adhere to traditional narratives about the nation and reduce its disruptive potential. However, the lives of many queer people in history, especially those who migrated, do not fit into the normative framework of national historiographies. When they traveled, they sometimes changed their identities, hid their past, or rejected labels that others gave them.

During my research, I have collected sources from archives across Europe and the United States to piece together the stories of several queer people who migrated between the 1930s and 1950s. One of them, a Jewish homophile activist, fled the Nazis through China and Japan to eventually settle in California. Another one escaped the war through Brazil before he headed to New York. Others migrated to Palestine or the United Kingdom. In each of the places, they left traces. Today, they reveal how these people’s identities shifted, how they tried to adjust to different cultures, sexual regimes, and local migration policies. Not always was the movement to America a change for the better. While homosexuality had been decriminalized in Poland already in 1932, some of them had to adapt to stricter mores and laws in the new places, such as the USA.

Building on these archival materials, and in cooperation with Alex Krebs, we have created a concept for historical learning in the digital space. We have called it “Transnationally Queer,” as it relies on multilingual sources, and a transnational approach. We invite students to research a collection of documents that come from different countries. This learning concept relies on the research of Krebs presented in the accompanying presentation.