Diacronie. Studi di Storia Contemporanea; Editor of the special issue: Maya De Leo (Web)

Proposals by: 10.12.2020

LGBTQIA+ studies identify a 40-year-old, multidisciplinary field focusing on a wide range of experiences and subjects defying gender norms. These studies made abundantly clear how the multiple ways gender outlaws inhabit and trespass the liminal zones of gender norms can offer a useful perspective on cultural contexts, conflicts and changes. Sexuality, in this sense, can be seen as a “total social fact”, playing a major role in shaping social and cultural spaces and thus representing an invaluable interpretative tool to understand our past and present.

As for contemporary history, LGBTQIA+ studies showed the key role of gender tensions in the social, political and cultural transformations of the western societies, as well as the gendered politics of colonial and postcolonial dynamics.

Queer historiography identified the gradual, not-linear, emergence of LGBTQIA+ subjectivities in the contemporary era, ranging from the long 19th Century to the present. Major topics of this process include: the discoursive creation of “sexual inversion” and the pathologization of queer sexualities and bodies throughout the 19th Century; the political claims of LGBTQIA+ liberation movements and their increasing visibility throughout the 20th Century; the LGBTQIA+ studies, theories, and perspectives that have been enriching the field of modern gender studies since the seventies.

LGBTQIA+ studies for contemporary history, having produced a vast amount of researches, are still questioning history and historiography: how can LGBTQIA+ history be written? Does it merely overlap with the history of LGBTQIA+ subjectivities or does it exceed the boundaries of the LGBTQIA+ community? Does it challenge the historical imagination in terms of sources, archives, political and disciplinary boundaries, gender categories?

The journal Diacronie. Studi di Storia Contemporanea is looking for contributions aimed at investigating these issues. The editor is looking for papers focused on (but not limited to) the following thematic axes: Read more … (Web)