Queer Dis/Appearance in the Colonial Archive:

This paper looks at the ways that gender and sexually diverse histories are both archived and erased as a strategy of colonial nation-building. It proposes that queer and trans histories from colonized geographies were imperative to constructing racist, transphobic, and homophobic myths that justified the colonial project. Inversely, in order for these myths to function, an erasure and suppression of European queer and trans histories must take place, thus setting up a binary of civilized/uncivilized purported through an understanding of gender and sexual diversity as immoral. [This article is a revision of the paper that received the 2024 Gerd Muehsam Award. The award recognizes excellence in a paper written by a graduate student on a topic relevant to art librarianship or visual resources curatorship.]