During the session “Bumps Ahead?,” we will discuss what queer history education has achieved so far, but we also want to look to the future. We want to do so from a transnational perspective that will not only allow us to compare the state of the field across several countries, but also to reflect on how to enable historical learning processes and relevant discussions in the classroom. To this end, we bring together perspectives from California, the state of Georgia, Germany, Poland, Italy, and England.

Don Romesburg explores what has changed since the first attempts were made in the United States to incorporate LGBTQ subjects in K-12 history education. He investigates the critical intersection of activism and politics, as well as the role of the state in the school. Don draws conclusions from more than twenty years of LGBTQ teaching in the United States and asks what lesson can we learn from it. Darla Linville focuses on the current ahistorical discourses that cast queer and trans people as both alien and dangerous to society. She discusses practical ways in which such narratives can be challenged and righted in history classrooms. Kamil Karczewski and Alex Krebs will show how queer historians and teachers in Europe face similar challenges to their colleagues in the United States. To counteract various forms of discrimination, Kamil demonstrates the potential of queer history in disrupting nationalist discourses. He includes queer microhistories in historical learning and let students explore how often fluid, ambiguous, and indifferent migrating people have been in terms of sexuality, gender, and nationality. Alex Krebs explores the opportunities for history education in digital spaces. She will present how students learn historical thinking in an educational learning platform using digital archives to narrate queer histories. Alex and Kamil will discuss the concept of transnational history education, which brings students from different countries to work together and compare their perspectives.

The session will be chaired by Pieter M. Judson, who has taught history of sexuality in the United States and Italy since the 1990s and observed the developments in queer history and its teaching on both sides of the Atlantic. The session will be a discussion on the current challenges and prospects for queer history educators. Most of all, it should become a forum where we will exchange experiences, ideas, and hopes for the future of the field.