Amy Stone and Jaime Cantrell’s Out of the Closet, into the Archives examines the experience, in the broadest sense, of queer archival research. The editors aim to demonstrate that archival research is “not merely intellectual but also emotional, erotic, and embodied” (9). They are as interested in the personal passions that drive queer archival research as they are in the feel of archival objects and in the look and, yes, the smell of various archival spaces. In sharp contrast with most descriptions of archival research, the thirteen essays in this collection paint a portrait of the archives as sensorially rich and emotionally moving. The various contributions highlight a wide range of queer archives primarily in the United States and Canada, from community-based “counterarchives,” including the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco; to more conventional institutionally based queer archives such as the University of Victoria’s Transgender Archives; and even to collections such as the Smithsonian’s Latino and Latin American artists’ papers, in which queerness appears as only a trace or “haunt” (175). The book is organized into four thematic sections, but the contributors’ concerns with materiality, affect, and the slippage between various archival “roles” run throughout.
Out of the Closet, Into the Archives: Researching Sexual Histories
By Amy L. Stone, Jaime Cantrell, Ann Cvetkovich, Agatha Beins, Craig M. Loftin, Maryanne Dever, Greg Youmans, Whitney Strub, Julie R. Enszer, Robb Hernández, Rebecca Lynne Fullan, Liam Oliver Lair, Aaron H. Devor, Lara Wilson, Linda M. Morra, and Yuriy Zikratyy, 2015
