Just Queer Folks

Uncovering the history of gender and sexual nonconformity in rural America during the first half of the twentieth century

Commended for Lambda Literary Awards (Studies) 2014

“"Johnson posits that hetero-normalization was an early-20th-century phenomenon rooted in the discredited eugenics movement of its time and was a middle-class morality handed down from urban elites.... [He] doggedly decodes contrasting versions of 'Big Rock Candy Mountain' that hint at gay sex, and pores over pages of the journal of the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s and 1940s to breathlessly report that gay people did, in fact, exist in rural areas." - Publishers Weekly "In this splendid book, Johnson teaches us to suspect received wisdom.... and dispel the notion that in the first half of the 20th century, same-sex intimacy and gender nonconformity were urban specific.... Johnson proves the worth of rigorous, scholarly interdisciplinary research.... VERDICT: This complex and original work should be read widely by all readers in its interrelated disciplines."-- Library Journal , September 2013”

"Colin Johnson's pioneering book argues that the way we think about modern lesbian, gay and queer identity forms a kind of "metro-chauvinism"... Just Queer Folks takes the reader on a journey through the non-metropolitan US in the first half of the 20th century, observing how heteronormalisation was imposed on the back roads of the nation by centralised state discourse and the conservative forces of capitalism. Via carefully prepared case study after case study, Johnson shows us how largely poor and working-class men and women lived out their queer diversity in situ, and he argues that small towns and rural communities accommodated eccentricity and often protected "their own". Throughout, he reviews the dominant idea of the queer social by inviting reconsideration of the dynamics of alterity and exclusion, and challenges the preconception that to be queer is to be urban, white and middle class." - Sally R. Munt, Times Higher Education, September 26th 2013 "Johnson posits that hetero-normalization was an early-20th-century phenomenon rooted in the discredited eugenics movement of its time and was a middle-class morality handed down from urban elites... [He] doggedly decodes contrasting versions of 'Big Rock Candy Mountain' that hint at gay sex, and pores over pages of the journal of the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s and 1940s to breathlessly report that gay people did, in fact, exist in rural areas." - Publishers Weekly "In this splendid book, Johnson teaches us to suspect received wisdom... And dispel the notion that in the first half of the 20th century, same-sex intimacy and gender nonconformity were urban specific... Johnson proves the worth of rigorous, scholarly interdisciplinary research... VERDICT: This complex and original work should be read widely by all readers in its interrelated disciplines."--Library Journal, September 2013 "Johnson's Just Queer Folks expands the repertoire of sources available to historians studying American sexuality and, most importantly, convincingly argues that a queer rural history requires greater attention for its contribution to the development of modern sexual identities, as well as resistances to them... [H]is readings of 'hard women' portraits in particular display an agile working of queer historicism to chart new territory of historical investigation."--Lambda Literary , August 2013 "Grounded in queer theory and an interdisciplinary approach, Johnson carefully challenges and qualifies assumptions that problematic sexualities and behaviors found freedom of expression only in cities. In nonmetropolitan regions across the US in the first half of the 20th century, primary sources including film, fiction, graphic images, government commissions, police surveillance, and scientific studies revealed a variety of sexual behavior and gender roles for rural (mostly white) folks, despite heteronormative prescriptions... [A] fascinating study... Summing Up: Recommended."--Choice, November 2013 "Johnson has produced a book that is both well-reasoned and readable, an expedition into an often neglected area of gay and lesbian history." - The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide "Just Queer Folks provides a powerful corrective to the faulty assumption that gender and sexual nonnormativity and rurality are incompatible... Taken as a whole, the book succeeds in mapping the wide range of queer practices that were commonplace for men in rural America. Further, the range of sources Johnson draws on is impressive and thus the book serves as an exemplar for scholars seeking to do queer historicism." - Gender & Society

Colin R. Johnson is Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and Adjunct Assistant Professor of American Studies, History, and Human Biology at Indiana University, Bloomington. 

Uncovering the history of gender and sexual nonconformity in rural America during the first half of the twentieth century

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