Queer Theory (Other Keyword)
1-25 (28 Records)
One of the strengths of prehistoric archaeology is its ability to document the full range of human variation. For Latin America, activist archaeology has the potential to inform postcolonial and Third World feminist critiques that challenge white supremacist legal systems that marginalize women of color and indigenous peoples. The false universalisms and cultural essentialisms found in human rights debates ignore the diverse experiences of women’s oppression, especially the indigenous, poor,...
Ambiguous Iconography: Queering the Shell Game (2015)
This paper queers archaeological interpretation by unpacking and destabilizing underlying assumptions in Southeastern iconography. While not focusing expressly on sexuality or gender in these representations, this research discusses the ways ambiguities in engraved shell iconography, more broadly, have been dismissed, glossed, and deemphasized. In part, this exclusion is unintentional and results from the amount of research that remains to be conducted on the vast body of images, but we need to...
Beyond Binaries: Queering the Archaeological Record of the Western Canadian Arctic (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Queer theory is often equated with sexuality research in archaeology (Blackmore 2011), but a queering of the archaeological record actually allows us to challenge all aspects of (hetero)normativity in archaeological practice (Croucher 2005; Blackmore 2011). Queer is "whatever is at odds with the normal, legitimate and the dominant" (Halperin 1995:62), and it...
Blood, Sweat and Queers: Roller Derby and Queer Heritage (2018)
Queer theory is a new and developing realm of heritage management; with the listing of historic places Stonewall National Monument and the Bayard Rustin Residence, queer heritage is attaining broader recognition. Investigations into the broader patterns of queer history will expose additional spaces and places with important associations to queer communities on multiple levels. Roller derby’s queer-normative environment has become a center of community-building in the last twenty years,...
Blurred Lines: Queering the divide between pre-historic and historic archaeology (2015)
The infamous divide between historic and pre-historic archaeology in the North American tradition often rests on the introduction of written texts or the arrival of Europeans to a region. With the division comes methodology that is considered acceptable by each group. Well-renowned archaeologists have discussed this divide in detail, yet we continue to maintain the boundaries due to lack of implementation of new theoretical/methodological paradigms. This paper discusses the queering of...
Built on Sand: The Historical Roots of Modern Queerphobia within Christianity (2017)
Homosexuality’s place within the church has been a topic of considerable debate among modern theologians. However, most theologians have only focused on homosexuality, disregarding the presence of all other alternative sexual identities and have used only Biblical textual evidence to justify their views on homosexuality. This text contributes a broader scope to the sexuality debate. It considers all queer sexualities, archaeological artifacts, and uses a queer theoretical lens to deconstruct the...
A Chained Melody: Queering Ceramic Industries in 19th century South Carolina (2016)
During the antebellum period, ceramic industries began to sprout up across South Carolina’s agricultural landscape. In the Edgefield district, located near the South Carolina-Georgia border, a number of family-owned kilns contracted enslaved laborers from nearby plantations to mass-produce stoneware for sale throughout the Southeast. Innovative alkaline glaze technologies became the foundation for experimental ceramic traditions and styles. A long-held local fascination with these ceramic...
Cosmic Vision: Queering Ancient Maya Scared Landscapes (2016)
As a method of deconstructing and disrupting what is normative, archaeologists have used queer theory to explore aspects of the formation and intersection of identities. In this paper I illustrate how queer theory can be used beyond the study of identity by exploring the relationships between people and places. Comprising 25 cenotes, or karstic sinkholes, Cara Blanca, Belize represents one of the highest concentrations of cenotes in the Southern Maya Lowlands. A highly sacred landscape, Cara...
Disrupting Pedagogies: Queer Theory in the Classroom, Field School, and Mentoring (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Gender Revolutions: Disrupting Heteronormative Practices and Epistemologies" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In this paper we discuss queer pedagogical methods. Through a review of our own experimental teaching practices, we aim to disrupt traditional pedagogical models. Over the course of our combined 16 years of teaching, we have implemented and tested a variety of exploratory techniques that embody the...
Entangled Identities on the American Frontier: Army Laundresses as Cultural Brokers at 19th Century Fort Davis, Texas (2017)
This paper focuses on the cultural slippage that occurs in frontier zones where competing worldviews create conditions for alternative, innovative, and layered performances of intersecting identities. As spaces of translation, frontiers are the ideal location to study entangled identities. Inhabitants of these queer landscapes constantly negotiate the multiple lived realities of often conflicting ideologies. I propose the use of third-space as a framework for understanding the fragmentation and...
Feeling Queer(ed) (2015)
Is sensory archaeology queer archaeology? This paper uses examples from the historic archaeology of confinement and enculturation to explore the potential of a sensory approach as a queer methodology. The primacy of vision has been challenged by both sensory archaeologists and queer theorists, and both acknowledge a multiplicity and fluidity of the senses. Envisioning a multi-sensorial subject allows archaeologists to approach the queerness of individual and group experience outside the confines...
The Gender(ed) Revolution: Female Priests and the Mary Magdalenas of the 16th Century Taki Onqoy Movement (Ayacucho, Peru) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Future Is Fluid...and So Was the Past: Challenging the 'Normative' in Archaeological Interpretations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Interpretations of past identities have until recently often been considered in dichotomous binaries, in which individuals are either male or female, peasant or elite, ritual specialist or commoner. With the application of queer theory to archaeological analyses over the past decade,...
Inclusive Heritage: Learning from Urban Art in Berlin (2017)
Alternative, subcultural, or otherwise non-mainstream forms of heritage are increasingly being recognized, both in the social imaginary and in the discipline. Such moments provide archaeologists with opportunities for actively working towards a more inclusive and diversified heritage practice. Specifically, my work explores the potential of urban art walking tours and workshops in the borough of Kreuzberg (Berlin, Germany) from a contemporary archaeological standpoint. As tour guides present...
Misidentification on the American Frontier: Queer Perspectives on Identity Classification in Historical Archaeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Future Is Fluid...and So Was the Past: Challenging the 'Normative' in Archaeological Interpretations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As archaeologists we link patterns of performance and daily practice to identity categories. Theses classifications depend on normalized understandings of idealized behaviors. However, the groupings we use to discuss past actors rarely fully encompass the extent of behaviors in which...
A Multiplicity of Voices: Towards a Queer Field School Pedagogy (2015)
A queer theory inspired perspective is valuable not only for broadening the scope of archaeological interpretation and our understanding of past lived experiences, but also for informing an archaeological pedagogy which expands the diversity of authoritative viewpoints in the discipline. Field schools, as one of the most central aspects of archaeological training, have the potential to either reaffirm heteronormative structures which obscure non-conforming persons and viewpoints or to promote...
Queer Animacies: Disorienting Materialities in Archaeology (2015)
This essay draws from contemporary strands of affect and materiality in queer theory to discuss a network of queer animacies in the historic record. Using examples of late 19th and early 20th century jook joints , I explore a range of affective material relationships that threaten heteronormative ideals. This attempts to move beyond privileging sexual acts and orientations as defining queerness, towards a queer historical framework attuned to the vast network of human and material...
Queer Eye for the Cave Guy: Exploring Non-Normativity in Upper Paleolithic Burials (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Future Is Fluid...and So Was the Past: Challenging the 'Normative' in Archaeological Interpretations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of Upper Paleolithic burials in Europe have illuminated several aspects of Upper Paleolithic lifeways, from health and diet, to status and social organization. These studies, while recognizing the rarity of Upper Paleolithic burials, interpret the Upper Paleolithic burial...
Queer Frontier Identities: A Look at at the Laundresses' Quarters and Enlisted Married Men's Quarters of Fort Davis, Texas (2017)
This paper defines frontiers as queer locals that shape the relationships and practices of individuals within them. Frontiers are liminal spaces where normative ideals are actively challenged and thrown into flux by competing ways of knowing, both new and old. Inhabitants of these heterogeneous communities simultaneous assert, contest, and reassert their positionality and personhoods daily through a series of meetings between and within cultural groups. As a result a third space of fluidity...
Queer Rations: Foodways at a 19th Century Military Fort (2015)
This paper explores the ways that Queer Theory can be used in the archaeological study of foodways using materials from Fort Davis, Texas. At this nineteenth century military outpost, a racially, ethnically and economically diverse community sidestepped normative notions of foodstuffs. By engaging a queer framework, this research investigates how consumption practices on the American frontier were less regulated and more fluid than previously interpreted. Fort Davis’ foodways - including...
Queering 'American': Archaeological Investigations of a 19th c. Military Fort in West Texas (2015)
This paper investigates how racial identity impacted the creation and maintenance of an American frontier and border community using an assemblage from a 19th century American Army encampment from Fort Davis, Texas as a case study. By engaging a queer theoretical framework, this research focuses on how Black, Mexican, and immigrant bodies challenged ideals of normative White citizenship during a period of great social upheaval and racial tension. With thousands of European immigrants and newly...
Queering Historical Worlds: Disorienting Materialities in Archaeology (2015)
This essay draws from contemporary strands of affect and materiality in queer theory to discuss approaches to queer materialities in archaeology. This attempts to move beyond privileging sexual acts and orientations as defining queerness (Blackmore 2011), towards vast assemblages of human and material convergences that queered social norms (Chen 2012). The provocative capacities of bodies, both human and non-human, to disorient social norms offers archaeologists alternative perspectives on...
Queering the Household Group: Challenging the Boundaries of an Archaeological Unit (2015)
The use of queer theory in archaeology aims to challenge static social structures. This paper focuses on how traditional assumptions of family and the household can be problematized through an investigation of non-household ‘households’ – such as saloons and other non-domestic residential spaces. In deconstructing the family, queer theory has elucidated the Western and modern biases that underlie the traditional definition of this social group. By challenging normative social constructions of...
Queering the Narrative: Diverse Pasts and Political Futures (2016)
This paper explores the impact of queer theory in destabilizing heteronormative and other fixed discourses in archaeological method, practice, and interpretation. By challenging the very idea of what constitutes “normal’ in archaeology, queer theory provides new ways of thinking about and engaging with change, process, and difference. These discussions become important and necessary interventions in political debates around modern queer identities as well as social diversity at a much larger...
Queering the Norm: Reinterpreting the Heterosexual Ideal (2015)
This paper aims to problematize the concept of heteronormativity through a queer perspective. Too often, heterosexuality is posited as a universal norm against which queer identities can be examined. Through a look at archaeological deposits associated with heterosexual relationships and practices - such as courtship, marriage, and prostitution- this discussion queers the 'normalness' of heterosexuality by showing that an ideal heterosexuality is rarely, if ever, truly performed. Using examples...
Teaching on the Down-Low: presenting queer theory to a broad audience (2015)
Because we so often think about archaeological theory as something for "advanced" students, and gender and queer theory still regularly get little 'air-time' in most courses, it is unusual to introduce students to these perspectives at the level of general education and introductory course work. Personal experience in teaching Archaeology of Gender in two religiously conservative states - Kentucky and Wisconsin - over the last 15 years suggests that there are ways in which we can move students...