This website presents the working manuscript Before the Name: A Queer History in Ten Decades, 1880–1969 under its public-facing title, Early Queer History. It preserves the project’s source links, evidence standards, production notes, and rights cautions.
Archive note. A police record may document an arrest, not a person’s self-understanding. A photograph may document a public image, not private sexual conduct. Links are research and discovery leads; they are not automatic reproduction permissions.
Reader Part 1Read the introduction and Chapters 2–5, covering 1880–1919: Victorian law, Wilde, sexology, performance, and World War I.Reader Part 2Read Chapters 6–11, covering 1920–1969: Weimar Berlin, Harlem, authoritarian repression, Cold War organizing, and Stonewall-era change.Research ToolkitOpen archive links, rights guidance, relationship-evidence standards, clearance logs, and selected further reading.BibliographyBrowse the selected Chicago-style bibliography of scholarship, archival repositories, institutional sources, and primary texts used in this project.
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Archive, rights, and research toolkit
Research access does not equal production clearance. Confirm item-level rights for every image, clip, scan, letter, recording, and performance.