Queer Frontier Identities: A Look at at the Laundresses' Quarters and Enlisted Married Men's Quarters of Fort Davis, Texas

Summary

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 and liminality is created in which cultural slippage between competing worldviews creates new conditions for alternative, innovative, and layered performances of intersecting identities. Using an assemblage of materials collected from the remains of nineteenth century Fort Davis ‘s laundresses quarters and enlisted married men’s housing. I am to explore how gendered /sexual relationships and negotiations were shaped by the queer location of frontier. Moreover, I ask how the Texas frontier specifically shaped the identities of its inhabitants.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2017   •
• Tales of the Texas Frontier: Research Conducted by the Fort Davis Archaeology Project (FODAAP) in Fort Davis, Texas

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 494