Looking Like a Lesbian
Channel: British Library
Date: 2021-07-21

How do gender and sexuality affect what we see, and how we see it?

What does it mean to look like a lesbian? Before queer activism lesbians were often 'apparitional', in the words of literary scholar Terry Castle. And if lesbians themselves are hard to see in the archive, their perspectives are even more elusive. From the 1950s through the 1990s, feminist and lesbian artists, writers, and historians took it upon themselves to build and re-build an archive of queer visuality.

How do gender and sexuality affect what we see, and how we see it? And how does the answer to that question change over time? In this talk, art history professor Louise Siddons will consider the multiple meanings of 'looking like a lesbian', using materials from the British Library and beyond to investigate the 20th-century history of the lesbian gaze.

Louise Siddons is an art historian specializing in American art and the visual culture of modernity. She is Associate Professor of Art History at Oklahoma State University and is the 2020-21 recipient of the Fulbright-British Library Eccles Centre Scholar Award.

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