What makes an object queer? The question seems simple until you start looking. A pride flag, sure. A protest placard, obviously. But also: ancient Egyptian tomb paintings. Roman artifacts. Sex toys. A photograph. A smartphone.
Brickell and Collard assembled sixty-three objects. Each gets a chapter. Each one is a window into how queer lives have always been embedded in material things—how objects carry the weight of identity and desire and community across centuries and across cultures.
The contributors span disciplines and continents. An archaeologist analyzing Egyptian tombs. A historian reading Roman inscriptions. A theorist thinking about how a smartphone becomes a tool for queer connection and visibility. The range is deliberate. It refuses to let queerness become a modern invention or a Western phenomenon. It traces genealogies backward and sideways and across geographies, showing how queer people have always left traces in the things they made and used.
The book’s argument accumulates through these objects: queer lives aren’t separate from the material world. They’re woven through it. A sex toy isn’t just functional—it’s evidence. A snapshot isn’t just a moment—it’s a claim. Even a smartphone becomes a queer object when it’s used to find community, to document existence, to refuse invisibility.
The collection reads like a cabinet of curiosities with footnotes—which is exactly what makes it unusual for academic work. It has the texture of discovery, the pleasure of looking closely at strange and specific things. But underneath that pleasure is serious work: excavating meaning from the objects queer people have touched, made, and left behind.
Details
| ISBN: 9781978801707 |
| Subtitle: |
| Genre: Lesbian Studies; LGBT Studies/Social Sciences |
| Subject(s): Art; Gay Studies; Gender Studies; LGBTQ+ Artists; LGBTQ+ Studies; Popular Culture; Social Science |
| Publication Date: 2019 |
| Original Publication Date: |
| Publisher: Rutgers University Press |
| Language: English |
| Format: Paperback |
| Pages: 416 |
| Rating: |
| Notes: Queer Objects was named a 2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title, a distinction awarded by the American Library Association to the most significant academic works of the year. Chris Brickell is a sociologist at the University of Otago in New Zealand, specializing in queer history; Judith Collard is an art historian at the same institution. The collection draws contributors from across multiple disciplines and countries. |
| Book_ID: 106043 |