Queer 1950s Rethinking Sexuality in the Postwar Years

Leading sexuality scholars explore queer lives and cultures in the first full post-war decade through an array of sources and a range of perspectives. Drawing out the particularities of queer cultures from the Finland and New Zealand to the UK and the USA, this collection rethinks preconceptions of the 1950s and pinpoints some of its legacies.

HEIKE BAUER is senior lecturer in English and Gender Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, UK. She works on gender, writing and the histories and theories of sexuality since the nineteenth century, and on translation. Her books include the anthology Women and Cross-Dressing 1800-1930 (2006) and English Literary Sexology: Translations of Inversion 1860-1930 (2009), a study of sexology and literature at the fin de siècle. She is completing a book on Magnus Hirschfeld, sexuality and cross-cultural exchange in the early twentieth century and is leading a related collaboration on sexology and translation in the modern world.

MATT COOK is senior lecturer in History and Gender Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, and Co-director of the Raphael Samuel History Centre. He works on the history of gender and sexuality and the history of London and is author of London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885 – 1914 (2003) and editor of A Gay History of Britain. His new book - Queer Domesticities - and a collection on post-war queer urban cultures in Europe will appear in 2013.

Introduction: Queer 50s; H.Bauer & M.Cook
PART I: ESPISTEMOLOGIES
Sexology Backward: Hirschfeld, Kinsey and the Reshaping of Sex Research in the 1950s; H.Bauer
'Someone to Love': Teen Girls' Same-Sex Desire in the 1950s United States; A.H.Littauer
Lesbians before 'the Lesbian', 'Sisters' in Faith and Crime: Conceptualisations of Cross-generational Sexual Relationships in Two Women's Same-sex Fornication Court Cases in 1950s Rural Finland; A.Sorainen
PART II: REPRESENTATIONS
'Who Is She?': Identities, Intertextuality and Authority in Non-Fiction Lesbian Pulp of the 1950s; K.Mitchell
Love 'Off the Rails' or 'Over the Teacups'?: Lesbian Desire and Female Sexualities in the 1950s Popular Press; A.Oram
Nouveau Désordre: Diabolical Queerness in 1950s French Cinema; A.Asibong
PART III: REASSESSMENTS
Moral Panic or Critical Mass?: The Queer Contradictions of 1950s New Zealand; C.Brickell
Queer Profits: Homosexual Scandal and the Origins of Legal Reform in Britain; J.Bengry
The Long 1950s as Radical-in-Between; J.V.Evans
PART IV: LEGACIES
Warm Homes in a Cold Climate: Rex Batten and the Queer Domestic; M.Cook
Geeks and Gaffs: The Queer Legacy of the 1950s American Freak Show; E.Stephens