Centering Slavery in Nineteenth-Century Queer History (1800s–1890s)

This chapter considers the position of slavery within the field of nineteenth-century queer history. It argues that the field has neglected queer histories of slavery and centered industrial northern cities and the western frontier as preeminent queer sites. The chapter reviews recent work in black queer studies to interrogate the field’s central exclusion (slavery) in relation to its dominant themes (industrialization and western expansion). In doing so, it argues that queer historical studies of slavery are academically viable and politically necessary to foreground the specificities of black queer histories and center slavery’s constitutive role in modern sexualities.