Resources for LGBTQ History Month

Submitted by Nick Grall on

LGBTQ History Month honors the histories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people and recognizes and educates on their struggles and achievements. Begun in 1994 by Rodney Wilson, a gay history teacher in rural Missouri, the observation was chosen to coincide with the anniversary of the first March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1979. It was declared a national history month in 2009 by President Obama. 

LGBTQ people have always been present, in every society and every time period around the world, but their stories are often missing from history books. UW History hopes that the following resources will bring a greater recognition and understanding of LGBTQ history and its often intersectional role in civil rights movements.

Books

  • An Angel in Sodom: Henry Gerber and the Birth of the Gay Rights Movement by Jim Elledge (Chicago Review Press, 2023)
  • Bad Gays: A Homosexual History by Ben Miller and Huw Lemmey (Verson, 2022)
  • Before We Were Trans by Kit Hayam (Seal Press, 2022)
  • Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by Riley Snorton (University of Minnesota Press, 2017)
  • Black. Queer. Southern. Women. by Patrick Johnson (University of North Carolina Press, 2018)
  • Chaucer’s Queer Nation by Glenn Burger (University of Minnesota Press, 2003)
  • Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginnings of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century by John Boswell (University of Chicago Press, 1980)
  • Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II by Alan Berube (University of North Carolina Press, 2010)
  • David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 Years of LGBTQ Music by Darryl Bullock (Overlook Duckworth, 2017)
  • The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America by Eric Cervini (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2020)
  • Gay Bar: Why We Went Out by Jeremy Atherton Lin (Little, Brown, and Company, 2021)
  • Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity by Robert Beachy (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014)
  • The Gay Revolution by Lillian Faderman (Simon & Schuster, 2015)
  • Gay Seattle: Stories of Exile and Belonging by Gary Atkins (University of Washington Press, 2011)
  • Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death by Lillian Faderman (Yale University Press, 2018)
  • A Little Gay History: Desire and Diversity Across the World by R.B. Parkinson (Columbia University Press, 2013)
  • Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir in Archives by Amelia Possanza (Catapult, 2023)
  • Lesbian Premodern by Noreen Giffney (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
  • Love on Trial: Our Supreme Court Fight for the Right to Marry by Kristin Perry and Sandy Stier (Roaring Forties Press, 2017)
  • Medieval Writings on Sex between Men: Peter Damian’s The Book of Gomorrah and Alain de Lille’s The Plaint of Nature by David Rollo (Brill, 2022)
  • The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True, Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps by Heinz Heger (Haymarket, 1994)
  • Nothing Natural is Shameful: Sodomy and Science in Late Medieval Europe by Joan Cadden (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013)
  • Others of My Kind: Transatlantic Transgender Histories by Alex Bakker (University of Calgary Press, 2020)
  • Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present by Neil Miller (Advocate Books, 2006)
  • Pride: The Unlikely Story of the True Heroes of the Miner’s Strike by Tom Tate and Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (John Blake, 2018)
  • Queer America: A People’s GLBT History of the United States by Vicki Lynn Eaklor (New Press, 2011)
  • Queer City: Gay London From the Romans to the Present Day by Peter Ackroyd (Abrams Press, 2018)
  • Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics by Timothy Stewart-Winter (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016)
  • A Queer History of the United States by Michael Bronski (Beacon Press, 2011)
  • Queer Lives Across the Wall: Desire and Danger in Divided Berlin, 1945-1970 by Andrea Rottmann (University of Toronto Press, 2023)
  • Queer Voices in Post-War Scotland: Male Homosexuality, Religion and Society by Jeffrey Meek (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)
  • Racism and the Making of Gay Rights: A Sexologist, His Student, and the Empire of Queer Love by Laurie Marhoefer (University of Toronto Press, 2023)
  • Same-Sex Sexuality in Late Medieval English Culture by Tom Linkinen (Amsterdam University Press, 2015)
  • Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe by John Boswell (Villard Books, 1994)
  • Same Sex Love and Desire Among Women in the Middle Ages by Pamela Shenigorn (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001)
  • Speak Now: Marriage Equality on Trial, the Story of Hollingsworth v. Perry by Kenji Yoshino (Crown Publishers, 2015)
  • The Stonewall Reader (Penguin Books, 2019)
  • Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement by Wendy Rouse (New York University Press, 2022)
  • The Unmentionable Vice: Homosexuality in the Later Medieval Period by Michael Goodich (Dorset, 1979)
  • Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval by Saidiya Hartman (W.W. Norton, 2019)
  • We Set the Night on Fire: Igniting the Gay Revolution by Martha Shelley (Chicago Review Press, 2023)
  • Who Will Be Remembered Here: Queer Spaces in Scotland edited by Lewis Hetherington and CJ Mahony (Historic Environment Scotland, 2025)
  • Who’s Who in Gay and Lesbian History From Antiquity to World War II edited by Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon (Rutledge, 2001)

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