2.7: Research Resources

Discuss, Present, Create, Debate

Compiled by Rachel Wexelbaum

• Discuss: Choose one or two resources listed in this chapter, and discuss them in relation to what you have learned about queer anthropology.
• Present: Choose a key topic or event found in this chapter. Then locate one or two resources from the “Quick Dip” and “Deep Dive” sections and develop a presentation for the class. Explain the significance of the topic, and provide additional details that support your explanation.
• Create: What idea, person, or event from this chapter really moved you? Do more research on that idea, person, or event based on the resources in this chapter. Then create your own artistic response. Consider writing a poem, drawing a picture, or editing a photograph in a way that demonstrates both what you have learned and how you feel about the issue or person.
• Debate: Find a partner or split into groups, and choose a topic, idea, or controversy from this chapter and have each partner or group present an opposing perspective on it. Use at least two of the resources in this chapter to support your argument.

Quick Dip: Online Resources

The Asia Pacific Transgender Network

The Asia Pacific Transgender Network (http://www.weareaptn.org/) is an advocacy and community network for transgender rights in China, Pakistan, India, and Nepal. The network releases reports and other publications to guide social and public policy.

Digital Transgender Archive

The Digital Transgender Archive (https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/) is an online hub for digitized archival materials on nonnormative gender practices from around the world.

Jen Deerinwater

Jen Deerinwater is a two-spirit citizen of the Cherokee Nation and has written on Medium (https://medium.com/@JenDeerinwater) and Truthout (https://truthout.org/authors/jen-deerinwater/page/1/) about the intersectionalities of Indigenous or Native identity and queer or two spirit in North America.

A Map of Gender-Diverse Cultures

An interactive Google map displays Indigenous cultures around the world that have gender and sexual identities distinct from those of Western cultures (http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/content/two-spirits_map-html/). This map ties in with other supplementary materials (linked on the web page) to support the documentary Kumu Hina, about the Hawaiian mahu.

Muxes Identidades Periféricas

See the Instagram account of the nonbinary muxe performer Lukas Avendaño, who advocates for muxe rights and awareness (https://www.instagram.com/muxe_lukas_avendano_muxes/). This chapter’s profile by Rita Palacios describes Avendaño’s work.

OutRight Action International

OutRight Action International (https://outrightinternational.org/), founded in 1990, works internationally to support the rights of LGBTIQ people. They advocate for LGBTIQ human rights and equality, and they provide technical assistance, training, and funding to local grassroots LGBTIQ groups around the world. They also publish reports and briefing papers on key topics that affect LGBTIQ people.

Takatāpui: A Resource Hub

This resource guide and podcast series is about and for LGBTQ+ Maori people and their families (https://takatapui.nz/).

Deep Dive: Books and Articles

Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualities, edited by Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe

This book was first published in 1996 and provided the first study of same-sex sexuality and gender diversity in Africa. It includes ethnographic essays based on research conducted in the 1990s and oral histories and translations of early ethnographic reports by German and French authors. The book was republished as an open educational resource in 2021 (SUNY Press, https://soar.suny.edu/handle/20.500.12648/1714) with a new foreword by Marc Epprecht that situates the book in the history of studies of indigenous African sexualities and genders.

Colouring the Rainbow: Blak Queer and Trans Perspectives: Life Stories and Essays by First Nations People of Australia, edited by Dino Hodge

The experiences of Indigenous Australians with diverse sexual and gender identities are revealed through personal stories and academic essays. Dino Hodge is an award-winning Australian LGBTQ+ studies scholar who is known in his country for his histories of LGBTQ+ existences in Australia and his work with Indigenous communities in HIV/AIDS treatment, audiology, career development, and education (Mile End, Australia: Wakefield Press, 2018).

“The Complicated Terrain of Latin American Homosexuality,” by Martin Nesvig

In this 2001 article in Hispanic American Historical Review (volume 81, numbers 3–4, pages 689–729), Nesvig provides a comprehensive, well-cited history of Latin American homosexualities and the impact of Spanish colonialism and Catholicism on these identities.

Gender Identity and Sexual Identity in the Pacific and Hawai’i: Introduction

This constantly updated research guide includes clear definitions of vernacular terms for queer identities in the Pacific and Hawaii and links to resources and groups supporting Pacific Islander gender and sexual-identity organizations (https://guides.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/Pacificsexualidentity). The guide was originally created by Eleanor Kleiber, a librarian at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Pacific Collection Librarian, and D. Kealiʻi MacKenzie, during his internship with the UHM library’s Hawaiian and Pacific Collection in 2012.

Invisible: Stories from Kenya’s Queer Community, by Kevin Mwachiro

This collection of short stories and essays about the queer experience in Kenya includes firsthand perspectives from both rural and urban queer folks. The author is a renowned gay rights activist (Nairobi, Kenya: Goethe-Institut Kenya, 2014).

Lady Boys, Tom Boys, Rent Boys: Male and Female Homosexualities in Contemporary Thailand, edited by Peter A. Jackson and Gerard Sullivan

Academic essays in this book cover portions of the populations of Thailand that the Western world would label LGBTQ+. These case studies reveal the challenges that lady boys, tom boys, rent boys, and other LGBTQ+ populations in Thailand face. Essay authors challenge Western theories and models of queerness in their interpretation of Thai identities (Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press, 2000). Jackson is a specialist in Thai history at Australian National University and conducts research on gender and sexual identities in Thailand.

The Many Faces of Homosexuality: Anthropological Approaches to Homosexual Behavior, by Evelyn Blackwood

Originally published in 1986, this book is one of the first collections of ethnographic materials on same-sex relations from different cultures and historical periods. It also provides an early critique of traditional anthropological approaches to studying homosexuality (New York: Routledge, 2010).

Same-Sex Relations and Female Desires: Transgender Practices across Cultures, edited by Evelyn Blackwood and Saskia Wieringa

In this collection of essays, historians, sociologists, and anthropologists offer evidence that non-Western women have autonomy over their identities and that same-sex female desire exists independently of Western colonialism and globalization. The book won the Ruth Benedict Book Award in Anthropology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).

“Sexualities and Genders in Zapotec Oaxaca,” by Lynn Stephen

This ethnography of sexual identities provides an overview of the history and culture of sexual and gender identities in Oaxaca, including an examination of the role of muxes. The 2002 article is published in Latin American Perspectives (volume 29, number 2; http://www.jstor.org/stable/3185126).

Sexuality and Translation in World Politics, edited by Caroline Cottet and Manuela Lavinas Picq

Caroline Cottet and Manuela Lavinas Picq brought together essays from authors around the world to demonstrate that Western imposition of LGBTQ+ terminologies on non-Western populations obstruct these populations’ civil rights movements and erase traditional cultures (Bristol, UK: E-International Relations; https://www.e-ir.info/publication/sexuality-and-translation-in-world-politics/).

Stories of Our Lives: Queer Narratives from Kenya, from NEST Collective

In June 2013, the Kenyan multidisciplinary group NEST Collective traveled across Kenya to record over 250 personal accounts of persons identifying as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex. This book presents a selection from the resulting archive to explore the consciousness, ambition, and expression of many queer Kenyans in their daily interactions with family, friends, schools, workplaces, religion, and ideas of the future and in diverse social contexts (Nairobi, Kenya: NEST Arts, 2015).

Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men, and Ancestral Wives: Female Same-Sex Practices in Africa, by Ruth Morgan and Saskia Wieringa

This pioneering work on lesbian identities in six sub-Saharan African countries is based on an oral history project and presents the voices of African women from Kenya, South Africa, Namibia, Tanzania, and Uganda talking about their lives and loves. Reviewers have noted the problematic nature of two white women as authors of such a volume—as well as how they collected the stories from the participants—but this book remains valuable (Johannesburg, South Africa: Jacana Media, 2005).

Two-Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality, and Spirituality, edited by Sue-Ellen Jacob, Wesley Thomas, and Sabine Lang

The first major contemporary work about the North American Indigenous two-spirit identity, this book covers how two-spirit people identify themselves and describe their lived experiences, how other Native Americans treat them, and how anthropologists and other scholars interpret and depict them. The Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists (now the Association for Queer Anthropology) granted this book the Ruth Benedict Prize in 1997 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1997).

With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India, by Gayatri Reddy

This is the definitive work on hijras (traditionally, South Asian men who sacrifice their genitals to a goddess in order to bless newlyweds with fertility). Hijras live as the third sex in India and Pakistan, usually in segregated, stigmatized communities. This ethnography focuses on how hijras navigate the complexities of identity, sexuality, morality, and local and global economies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).