Celebrate Pride Month at your library!
Pride Month is celebrated June and is a time to celebrate and commemorate LGBTIQA+ people, culture, and activism throughout history. With increasing attacks on trans and gender diverse people, it is an important time to uplift, share and learn from LGBTIQA+ community voices and histories.
June is an important month for international LGBTIQA+ solidarity, particularly since a series of violent confrontations called the Stonewall Riots in 1969. June is also significant in the history of the LGBTIQ rights movement in Australia; the first Australian gay mardi gras march was held in Sydney in June 1978 to mark the tenth anniversary of Stonewall. The violent response to the march galvanised the movement further in Australia.
Libraries have also recently come under attack for promoting diversity, with groups attempting to limit access to LGBTQI+ content (and other diverse voices) through complaints, re-classification and book banning. There have also been increasing high profile attempts to shut down rainbow and drag storytime events. Deakin Library is and will remain committed to diversity and inclusion. Our Library Plan 2022–2025 features the strategic priority of Advancing human-centred and inclusive knowledge systems and spaces. In practice, this looks like promoting diverse voices in our collection, working to make our spaces safe and welcoming for everyone, and hosting events and activities that allow people to engage with diverse perspectives.
If you’ve finished study for the trimester, need a break or want to add LGBTIQA+ perspectives to your research, you can check out the following resources from our collection and beyond.
Finding queer and trans histories
Some books and more resources that we recommend to help you get started with your research:
Rainbow History Class: your guide through queer and trans history by Hannah McElhinney
Victoria’s transgender history by Noah Riseman
NSW Trans History Report — TransHub by Noah Riseman
Australian Trans Health History Report – AusPATH – by Noah Riseman
A history of LGBTIQ+ Victoria by Graham Willett, Angela Bailey, Timothy W. Jones & Sarah Rood
Trans erasure, trans visibility: History, archives, and art by Archie Barry
Trans people aren’t new, and neither is their oppression: a history of gender crossing in 19th-century Australia by Robin Eames
LGB and/or T History – Digital Transgender Archive by Hugh Ryan
Queer: a graphic history by Meg-John Barker and Jules Scheele
Colouring the rainbow: black queer and trans perspectives: life stories and essays by First Nations People of Australia edited by Dino Hodge
Nothing to Hide Voices of Trans and Gender Diverse Australia edited by Sam Elkin, Alex Gallagher, Yves Rees & Bobuq Sayed
Living and loving in diversity: an anthology of Australian multicultural queer adventures edited by Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli
A feminist post-transsexual autoethnography: challenging normative gender coercion by Julie Peters.
In Flux: Trans and Gender-Diverse Reflections and Imaginings edited by Urszula Dawkins & Alex Nichols
Transgender warriors: making history from Joan of Arc to RuPaul by Leslie Feinberg
Transgender history: the roots of today’s revolution by Susan Stryker
Turning archival: the life of the historical in queer studies edited by Daniel Marshall and Zeb Tortorici
Queer Between the Covers: Histories of Queer Publishing and Publishing Queer Voices by Leila Kassir & Richard Espley
Trans historical: gender plurality before the modern edited by Greta LaFleur, Masha Raskolnikov, and Anna Kłosowska
Before Trans: Three Gender Stories From Nineteenth-Century France by Rachel Mesch
Black on both sides: a racial history of trans identity by C. Riley Snorton
The queer art of history: queer kinship after fascism by Jennifer V. Evans.
Work!: a queer history of modeling by Elspeth H. Brown.
Exquisite materials: episodes in the queer history of Victorian style by Abigail Joseph
A queer history of fashion: from the closet to the catwalk edited by Valerie Steele
Queer public history: essays on scholarly activism by Marc Stein
Female husbands: a trans history by Jen Manion
The Made-Up State: Technology, Trans Femininity, and Citizenship in Indonesia by Benjamin Hegarty
Queer Rebels: Rewriting Literary Traditions in Contemporary Spanish Novels by Łukasz Smuga Translated by Patrycja Poniatowska
If you’re looking for even more, browse the shelves in the 305–306 sections at your nearest campus as it can be one of the best ways to find books on LGBTIQ+ topics, especially if you’re not quite sure where to start your research.
You can also try the following databases:
Our Gender and Sexuality Studies resource guide will help you find more resources too.
Bonus fiction recommendations to help you think differently about queer and trans histories:
Confessions of the fox by Jordy Rosenberg