Travel Dust and Wanderlust: The Queer Routes of Early African American Blues Traditions

Summary

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.

The historical emergence of modern queer subcultures is often framed as an urban phenomenon attributed to the anonymity of metropolitan centers. Far less attention has been paid to rural queer ecologies where systems of racial and sexual surveillance coalesced in the Jim Crow Era. Foregrounding the work of Black feminist and queer theorists, this paper examines the disorderly atmospheres that fostered a queer sense of wanderlust in early African American blues traditions. This network of transitory routes through train depots, jook joints, and shadowy enclaves where blues was born opened a space for alternative expressions of gender and sexuality. Many blues lyrics rejected traditional notions of domesticity and echoed the nomadic lifestyles of itinerant workers, railroaders, and outcasts. A queer sense of wanderlust underlying these fugitive maneuverings stimulated musical experimentation and fostered novel forms of kinship outside the traditional confines of home and family.  

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• Gender Revolutions: Disrupting Heteronormative Practices and Epistemologies

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 811