Erasing Queer Identity: Moll Cutpurse

Sometimes this blog is a dispassionate and intellectual summary of academic research. Sometimes it's a total squee-fest about a great source or a fascinating piece of historical evidence. And sometimes it's the equivalent of rage-tweeting. This one has turned into the last. Ungerer's article is a valuable single source for most of the documentary evidence of Mary Frith's life. And it's a maddening morass of unsupported and contradictory prejudice, directed at the goal of erasing any trace of queer identity from that life (plus some snide and snarky comments directed at other researchers on the topic). Historians are human beings like the rest of us, and sometimes you just want to smack them upside the head. This is one of those times.

Major category
Posting date

Comments

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.