ABSTRACT
This essay spans the colonial period through the late twentieth century, considering two central themes. First, it explores how rural locations have both supported and limited individuals engaged in non-normative gender and sexual practices as well as queer communities. Second, it considers the idea of the rural in shaping understandings of LGBT identities and queer sexuality, asking how the rural/urban dichotomy has functioned in the popular imagination to construct binary systems of gender and sexual identity while also offering opportunities to subvert these binaries.
