Item
"Let's Not Homosexualize the Library Stacks": Liberating Gays in the Library Catalog
title
"Let's Not Homosexualize the Library Stacks": Liberating Gays in the Library Catalog
viaf
publisher
University of Texas Press
publication year
2015
description
ENCOUNTERING A BOOK WITH queer characters and storylines can be a personal or academic milestone—a transformative awakening to self-knowledge. For the more seasoned among us, such a discovery was likely fraught with pathologizing language that reflected the prevailing attitudes of the time. In libraries before the 1970s the books would have been cataloged with the subject heading “Sexual perversion” and shelved alongside books on sex crimes, incest, and pedophilia. Those searching for fictional works about gays and lesbians found themselves identifying with particularly flawed characters whose stories usually ended tragically. These readings often took place in the stacks, in stolen, secret moments.
education level
temporal
keywords
reviewer
Katie Arthur
was created by
Adler, Melissa A.