Gender and Sexuality Studies
Welcome to the Gender and Sexuality Studies Guide - giving you information on library resources and services relating to gender and queer studies.
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News, Film and Visual Media
The Queer Britain collection, accessible for free via the BFI Player, explores screen representations of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender lives over the past century.
Use these databases to search for and view documentaries, interviews, films, and other moving pictures:
Queer Studies Databases
The following databases provide access to a wide range of historical documents relevant to learning, teaching and research in queer history e.g. government documents, newspapers, pamphlets, legal documents, personal papers and other primary sources.
Journals for Queer Studies
Online Resources for Queer Studies
- The AdvocateNews magazine for the LGBTQ population, read nationwide and published since 1967.
- British Library: LGBTQ HistoriesFrom the 1500s to today, this site charts the struggles for love, identity and legislative change faced by LGBTQ communities in the UK. This is not a finite resource and will grow over time to represent the spectrum of LGBTQ life and experience in the UK.
- Digital Transgender ArchiveThe purpose of the Digital Transgender Archive (DTA) is to increase the accessibility of transgender history by providing an online hub for digitized historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world.
- GLBTQ ArchivesFounded in 2000 by Publisher Wik Wikholm to create the world's largest encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer culture and history and to deliver it online.
- International Gay and Lesbian Rights CommissionSort by Topics - such as "Decriminalization" or "Equality" - or by Country, for a global perspective and breaking news related to LGBTQ human rights around the world.
- Lesbian Herstory ArchivesThe Lesbian Herstories Archives Audio/Visual Collections contains digitized copies of some of the 3,000 oral herstory cassettes in the Archives’ Spoken Word Collection and 950 videotapes in the Video Collection. This comprises over 385 hours of digitized content on the site.
- Transgender Archives at the University of VictoriaThe Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria is committed to the preservation of the history of pioneering activists, community leaders, and researchers who have contributed to the betterment of Trans+ and other gender-diverse people. Since 2007, they have been actively acquiring documents, rare publications, and memorabilia of persons and organizations associated with activism by and for Trans+ people.
School of Scottish Studies Archives: LGBTQ+ Research Guide
The School of Scottish Studies Archives and Library have recently created a Research Guide to LGBTQ+ literature in their collection. You can download this resource from the attachment below. For more information about the SSSA and it's collections, please visit their webpages:
School of Scottish Studies Archives & Library
You can also find out more about LGBTQ+ resources in the Centre for Research Collections using the information found on their web pages:
- Research Guide to LGBTQ+ Records at the SSSAThis is a research guide for our LGBTQ+ and related records and resources held at the School of
Scottish Studies Archives, designed to assist you with research and locating LGBTQ+ records.
This resource was developed as part of the Queering the Archive initiative.
Reference works for Queer Studies
The International Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality by ISBN: 9781405190060Publication Date: 2015-06-02
Routledge International Encyclopedia of Queer Culture by ISBN: 9780415569668Publication Date: 2011-05-17
Queering the Archive
The School of Scottish Studies Archives team are working on an initiative entitled 'Queering the Archive'.
From their inaugural blog post on the topic:
This initiative aims to increase representation of LGBT+ records within our collections. 
Queering the Archive will hope to investigate the gaps in our collections and cataloging to improve LGBT+ representation with aims for further development and active archiving in the future. The initiative is a part of our 70th Anniversary plans and will be included in a series of events over the rest of the year. The initiative will allow us to go forward in improving marginalised and underrepresented voices and material.
The blog posts published thus far contain a range of resources from the archive and discussions regarding the representation of LGBT+ people in the Galleries, Museums, Archives and Libraries (GLAM) sector, and contain many references to further material. You can find much more information about this work on the SSSA blog under the Queering the Archive tag, or contact information for the Archives team can be found on the School of Scottish Studies web pages. Alternatively, staff and students may request access to the Queering the Archive sharepoint site (UoE login required).
- Queering the Archive: Discussion and Intervention workshop slidesThese slides were used in the introductory discussion workshop held by SSSA on 25th August 2021. They contain information about the project, the archives and references for further research.
A Practical Guide to Searching Lgbtqia Historical Records by ISBN: 9780367439606Publication Date: 2020-09-10This book provides a number of effective tools to aid in the recovery of LGBTQIA historic material by providing extensive glossary and non-glossary written descriptions, and how to use those terms and phrases in searching effectively online and offline. Researching hidden and forbidden people from the past can be extremely difficult. Terminology used to write about LGBT+ people shifts over time, legal terminology enforces certain set terms which some writers use but others reject to avoid informing or disgusting a reading public. Often written descriptions contain no set terminology at all. How then can LGBT+ people be found in historic records? This book provides practical tools for a researcher wanting to uncover material from online or hard copy sources.
Queering the Museum by ISBN: 9781351120159Publication Date: 2019-11-01Queering the Museum develops a queer analysis of the ways in which museums construct themselves, their core business, and their publics through the, often unconscious, use of inherited ways of knowing and doing. Providing a critique of both the practices and conventions associated with the modern public museum, and the ontological assumptions that inform them, the authors consider recent discourse around inclusion in museums and explore the ways this has been taken up in practice. Highlighting the limits of particular approaches to inclusion, and the failure to move away from a traditional museological paradigm, the book outlines an alternative critical museological approach that the authors refer to as 'queer'.
