Queer Sites Gay Urban History Since 1600 »

Queer Sites: Gay Urban Histories Since 1600 offers a compelling history of gay space in seven of the world's major cities from the early modern period to the present. Describing gay space as an area with a significant gay/lesbian population, this collection of essays focuses on the changing nature of queer experience in London, Amsterdam, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, Paris, Lisbon and Moscow. The contributors, leading scholars in gay history, span a rich variety of disciplines and make extensive use of source material to examine the transition from the sexual furtiveness of centuries when male homosexual behavior was criminal, to the open affirmation of gay identities in the 1990s.

Original in its comparative approach to gay urban history, Queer Sites reveals the differences between the American model of gay male life and that of cities in other societies. By concentrating on the importance of the city and varied meeting places such as parks, river walks, bathing places, the street, bars and even churches, the book explores the extent to which gay space existed, the degree of social collectiveness felt by those who used this space and their individual histories.

Contributors: Dan Healey, Gert Hekma, David Higgs, Michael Sibalis, Randolph Trumbach and Les Wright.

Publishers Weekly

Discussions of "gay geography" and "gay space" have recently become popular both in and out of the academy. David Bell and Gill Valentine's Mapping Desire, Aaron Betsky's Queer Space and Queers in Space, edited by Gordon Brent Ingram et al., laid the groundwork for sophisticated new discussions of sexuality, public space and privacy. Higgs's collection of seven original essays revealing the history of same-sex activity and community in Paris, Moscow, Amsterdam, Lisbon, London, Rio de Janeiro and San Francisco fills in the gaps left by the more theoretical earlier works. The contributors, all academics, draw upon the disciplines of history, sociology, urbanology, public policy, gender/sexuality studies, anthropology and sometimes even literary criticism to delineate how physical topography, economy, customs and daily life shaped and have been shaped by the presence of clearly defined and socially acknowledged same-sex populations. Most of the pieces here are engaging and provocative, if occasionally unconvincing. Ralph Trumbach's description of a sodomitic "third sex" in 18th-century London radically reinterprets familiar material and uses gender as well as sexual activity as focal points. Dan Healey's analysis of Russian drinking habits and arrests in Moscow public men's rooms in the 1940s is strikingly original. Too often, however, exacting scholarship gives way to generalizations and easy assumptions, particularly in Les Wright's delineation of San Francisco's history. While this is a serious flaw, it is offset by the fact that these essays map a mostly uncharted field of study. Illustrations. (June)