The next three LHMP entries are all taken from the collection Queerly Phrased: Language Gender, and Sexuality, which focuses on linguistic data and analysis. I'd picked the book up back in my linguistics grad school days, so it wasn't shelved with my gender and sexuality books and I hadn't realized it had relevant articles until I saw the title in a bibliography I was mining and said, "Hey, wait, I think I own that book!" The first two of the articles definitely show some limitations from the authors not having a deep historical background.
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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 39 (previously 19a) - On the Shelf for February 2018 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2018/02/03 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for February 2018.
This post brings to a close my doubled schedule of posts covering The Lesbian Premodern. Next week we go back to one post per week and publications that address people and events more directly, rather than examining the theoretical work of "doing history". I hope that this digression into theoretical concerns has added to my readers' understanding of the complex dynamics that lie behind "just the facts, ma'am." I've certainly enjoyed this tour through the landscape of historiography.
The cyclicity of both history and theories of history has been one of the themes in this collection. Vicinus looks at examples of those cycles through the lens of a Victorian writer she's been studying.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 37 (previously 18c) - Book Appreciation with Kathleen Knowles - Transcript
(Originally aired 2018/01/20 - listen here)
Heather Rose Jones: This week we welcome Kathleen Knowles back to talk about historic fiction that she really has enjoyed reading. Welcome!
Kathleen Knowles: Hello!
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 38 (previously 18d) - (Un)Conventional Women - transcript
(Originally aired 2018/01/27 - listen here)
Another summing-up article that looks at the contents of the volume from a number of different angles. Although there is a great deal of repetition in this section of the collection, I like the focus on a deep understanding of the progression of theoretical frameworks that affected both what was studied and how it was interpreted.
In my focus on the "facts and documents" end of historic research, I tend to have little patience for discussions of "theories about theories" far removed from a consideration of the lives and experiences of actual people in history. That doesn't mean that I don't value them. The study of history is far from an objective, value-neutral practice, and if we don't examine and address the subjective, value-infused context in which history is done, we end up accepting those contexts as "fact" when they are far from any such thing.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 36 (previously 18b) - Interview with Kathleen Knowles - Transcript
(Originally aired 2018/01/13 - listen here)
Heather Rose Jones: Welcome to the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast. Today, we’re having an interview with author Kathleen Knowles. I knew her as Kathy, back a long time ago when we worked at the same biotech company together. Welcome, Kathy.
One of the themes that I find really valuable in this collection of essays is poking at the question of whether and why it is important to find connections between historic modes of sexuality and the modes familiar to modern producers and consumers of historic research and theory. Given how prominent and foundational Lillian Faderman has been in the field of lesbian history, I always feel a bit guilty when I describe my winces at certain of her approaches, though in this essay I think she addresses the underlying premises of those winces fairly directly.
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