Drawing on recommendations from students and scholars, The Department of Methodology at LSE present ten books that address new ways of thinking and new interdisciplinary methodologies for exploring LGBTQ+ issues.
The Department of Methodology at LSE is known for its interdisciplinary research and the teaching it delivers to thousands of LSE students each year. But, within the department is a strong community of activists and allies who work to make knowledge available, share perspectives and educate others about LGBTQ+ issues. Being a methodologist means having a critical eye, breaking down norms and boundaries, and maximising our understanding of the world through the application of innovative skills and techniques.
This selection of ten books on LGBTQ+ Studies in Methodology and Beyond is taken from a new bookshelf in the department, which was created collaboratively by MSc and PhD students and staff. A key theme is intersectionality; the experiences of LGBTQ+ people cannot be isolated from experiences of race, disability, locality, gender, capital. For methodologists and other interdisciplinary scholars, the texts knit together to form a foundation for thinking about and researching LGBTQ+ issues. The list is by no means definitive, so please share your own recommendations in the comments section and if you find yourself at the department, drop in and explore the full range of books on our still-expanding LGBTQ+ bookshelf.
Queer and Trans People of Colour in the UK explores the meanings of these activist groups in the UK, considering the tensions around inclusion and belonging across lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) and of colour communities and wider British society. Offering a radical and critical intervention into psychology, this text will be of key interest to scholars, activists, community organisers, counsellors, and the third sector.
Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action. Kevin Guyan. Bloomsbury. 2022.
This important text is the first to look at queer data – defined as data relating to gender, sex, sexual orientation and trans identity/history. Kevin Guyan shows us how current data practices reflect an incomplete account of LGBTQ lives and helps us understand how data biases are used to delegitimise the everyday experiences of queer people.
Imagining Queer Methods. Amin Ghaziani and Matt Brim. NYU Press. 2019.
Imagining Queer Methods showcases the methodological renaissance unfolding in queer scholarship. This volume brings together emerging and esteemed researchers from all corners of the academy who are defining new directions for the field. From critical race studies, history, journalism, lesbian feminist studies, literature, media studies, and performance studies to anthropology, education, psychology, sociology, and urban planning, this impressive interdisciplinary collection covers topics such as humanistic approaches to reading, theorising, and interpreting, as well as scientific appeals to measurement, modelling, sampling, and statistics.
Drawing on a deep and varied archive of materials — early sexological texts, fugitive slave narratives, Afro-modernist literature, sensationalist journalism, Hollywood films — C. Riley Snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable. Revealing instances of personal sovereignty among blacks living in the antebellum North that were mapped in terms of “cross dressing” and canonical black literary works that express black men’s access to the “female within,” Black on Both Sides concludes with a reading of the fate of Phillip DeVine, who was murdered alongside Brandon Teena in 1993.
LGBTQ Health Research: Theory, Methods, Practice is a primer on public health and behavioural research methods involving LGBTQ+ populations. The book is divided into three sections. The first, “Introduction to LGBTQ Health Research,” includes chapters on the human rights context and global health, as well as the chapter “A Love Note to Future Generations of LGBTQ Health Researchers,” which offers encouragement to current and future researchers and stresses the importance of mentorship. The second section, “Descriptive Research Methods,” is useful to researchers in other fields of health research. It includes chapters on the challenges of defining and measuring the complex concepts of sexual orientation and of gender identity, practical approaches to surmounting the challenges of sampling LGBTQ populations, how to incorporate theoretical frameworks into study design, and approaches involving social networks and couples in HIV prevention and care. The third section, “Intervention Design and Research,” focuses on designing and carrying out public health interventions. Rich in case studies, it addresses topics including how to engage and target populations, involving members of the target population in the design and implementation of programs, and the use of systematic program-planning processes to ensure programs are responsive to the communities they are designed to serve.
Queer Sites in Global Contexts presents tangible examples of empirical research and practice-based work in the fields of queer and gender studies; geography, architectural, and urban theory; and media and digital culture. Responding to the critical absence surrounding experiences of non-White queer folk in Western academia, the book acts as a timely resource for scholars, activists, and thinkers interested in queer placemaking practices—both spatial and digital—of diverse cultures.
The essays in Queer Feminist Science Studies “queer”—or denaturalize and make strange—ideas that are taken for granted in both gender and science studies. Reimagining the meanings of and relations among queer and feminist theories and a wide range of scientific disciplines, contributors foster new critical and creative knowledge-projects that attend to shifting and uneven operations of power, privilege, and dispossession, while also highlighting potentialities for uncertainty, subversion, transformation, and play.
In The Politics of Dating Apps, Dr Chan critically presents the different possibilities (affordances) of dating apps (such as Tantan, Blued, Aloha) in a Chinese context, trying to disrupt the conservative stigma of ‘slut-shaming’ of dating app users. In addition to the fascinating field stories, Dr Chan also provides insight into a number of relevant theories, such as affect theory. The book is ideal for students interested in the intersection of media studies and gender studies or sexuality studies.
Queer and Trans African Mobilities draws on diverse case studies from the length and breadth of Africa, offering the first in-depth investigation of LGBT migration on and from the continent. The collection provides new insights into the drivers and impacts of displacement linked to sexual orientation or gender identity and challenges notions about why LGBT Africans move, where they are going and what they experience along the way.
Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability. Robert McRuer. NYU Press. 2006.
Crip Theory attends to the contemporary cultures of disability and queerness that are coming out all over. Both disability studies and queer theory are centrally concerned with how bodies, pleasures, and identities are represented as “normal” or as abject, but Crip Theory is the first book to analyse thoroughly the ways in which these interdisciplinary fields inform each other. Robert McRuer examines how dominant and marginal bodily and sexual identities are composed, and considers the vibrant ways that disability and queerness unsettle and re-write those identities in order to insist that another world is possible.
The content generated on this blog is for information purposes only. This Article gives the views and opinions of the authors and does not reflect the views and opinions of the Impact of Social Science blog (the blog), nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Please review our comments policy if you have any concerns on posting a comment below.
Image Credit:
