View main menu

Research Project Queer Women 1870-2020

Project Duration: 01/01/2022 - 04/20/2027
The research project Queer Women 1870–2020 (New Histories of Same-Sex Relationships 1870–2020) explores women's romantic and sexual relationships with other women throughout history. Denmark is often shaped by a narrative in which LGBTQIA+ people (i.e., lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender individuals, queers, intersex and asexual) have historically moved from being criminalized and oppressed to gradually gaining acceptance, rights, and inclusion in society.

Although this narrative of progress is often applied to the entire LGBTQIA+ spectrum, it primarily stems from research into men’s relationships. As a result, there is a significant gap in our knowledge—what we know about LGBTQIA+ history is largely limited to what we know about men. New Histories of Women’s Relationships with Women 1870–2020 seeks to fill this gap. A key difference between women’s and men’s relationships was that while men’s sexual relationships (as well as men dancing together) were criminalized, neither sex nor dancing between women was illegal. In fact, some evidence suggests that Copenhagen had a thriving ‘lesbian’ dance culture in the first half of the 20th century. This project aims to bring new histories to light, including stories of multiple women (including ‘women’ who today might be described as non-binary or trans) who formed romantic and sexual relationships from the 1870s to the 1950s. These relationships appear to have been more accepted by families and local communities than previously assumed.

In this way, the project seeks to rewrite history and show that it is more complex than most of us have previously assumed. At the same time, it aims to use this new history to develop new theories of gender and sexuality while also contributing methodologically to archival research.

The researchers work with various historical sources (including photographs, newspapers, letters, medical records, and fiction) based on the hypothesis that not only historical periods but also the type of source and the women’s own contexts (such as social class and age) shaped how their relationships were perceived. Additionally, the project examines—across sources and time—how gender identities and sexual practices have been linked or separated over the centuries.

The project is funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark and runs from 2022-2026.
Queer kvinder

  • Project leader

    Rikke Andreassen, professor, Roskilde University, rikkean@ruc.dk


    Researchers

    Rikke Andreassen, professor, Roskilde University, rikkean@ruc.dk

    Mette Kia Krabbe Meyer, senior researcher, The Royal Danish Library, mkkm@kb.dk

    Marie Lunau, postdoc, Roskilde University, lunau@ruc.dk 

    Sofia Keller Bakhsh, research assistant, Roskilde University, sofiakb@ruc.dk 

  • Sub-projekt: The myriad stories of the press

    Rikke Andreassen, professor, Roskilde University, rikkean@ruc.dk

    Danish newspapers have recently been digitized, providing online access to historical media. This sub-project explores accounts of women’s relationships with other women by analyzing forgotten scandal stories, birthday portraits, obituaries, and death notices, as well as personal ads. The sub-project highlights a wide range of narratives, offering different portrayals (positive, negative, and neutral) of past relationships between women. Methodologically, it examines how research can give voice to those who did not write themselves but were written about. 

    Avisudklip starten af 1900-tallet om fattige kvinder

    Sub-project: Sex workers, medical science, police, and rebellion

    Rikke Andreassen, professor, Roskilde University, rikkean@ruc.dk

    Through analyses of police reports, hospital records, and medical science, this project sheds light on women's same-sex relationships as well as the scientific view of poor women and sex workers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Medical reports consistently describe how women, especially sex workers, engaged in romantic and sexual relationships with one another. Surprisingly, the project finds that neither the police nor medical professionals seemed shocked or outraged by these relationships, suggesting that such affairs were not heavily stigmatized at the time.

    The project delves into medical studies of tattoos, revealing that many women had their lovers’ names tattooed on their bodies. While medical science often viewed sex workers - specially those with tattoos - as morally inferior and less intelligent, the project highlights how these tattoos can also be understood as part of the women’s self-narratives, agency, and sense of community. Similarly, the project explores women’s resistance to authorities such as doctors and the police. Finally, it seeks to trace the individual women mentioned in scientific reports to uncover their personal stories and lives. 
     

    Sub-project: Queer Women in the Danish art and culture environment during the period 1870-1910

    Mette Kia Krabbe Meyer, Senior Research Fellow, Special Collections, Royal Danish Library, mkkm@kb.dk

    In the late 19th century, a group of women built careers in art, craft, and cultural circles. Many of them lived with other women, and this study explores how their professions brought them together and how they formed personal and political networks across different communities. Taking visual culture as a starting point, I focus on art and photography as women's professions, but also on the role of images in shaping and expressing new forms of identity. Some of these women stood out through their appearance and lifestyle - wearing short hair, smoking, and bicycling - but this project is about all the women: the images of them, their work, their friendships, professional collaborations, shared homes, relationships, and even their "marriages" to other women.

    The study draws on photographs alongside a range of other sources that expand the possibilities for interpretation. A central aim of the project is to develop an analytical approach to these materials, particularly photography. This includes both images of known historical characters and photographs of unknown individuals, where bodily expressions and relationships are open to interpretation. In other words, the project examines how different representations shape the way we read historical photographs.


    Sub-project: A Queer Archive of Feelings and Rebellion

    Marie Lunau, postdoc, Roskilde University, lunau@ruc.dk 

    Through love letters exchanged between women around 1900, I examine their relationships and feelings concerning sexuality, love, community, and rebellion. My work is based on the notion that a queer archive is an archive of feelings, and that an archive of feelings can reveal complexities, contradictions, and nuances in historical events that go beyond traditional archival approaches. By combining affect theory and queer theory in a historical context, I explore alternative ways and methods of representing and imagining the lives of queer individuals. For example, I intend to write against established narratives that confine queer women to marginalized stories of absent families and lonely lives.

    The letters we work with are found in police reports describing working-class women who sold sex in the late nineteenth century. These police documents often reproduce violence, control, and silence around queer women. In this project, we attempt to tell the stories of queer women’s lives without repeating or replicating the surveillance and disciplining that the public records frequently document. Instead, the letters represent the women’s own experiences and feelings of longing, love, joy, community, resistance, and rebellion. We also draw on methodologies that combines historical facts and sources with 'critical fabulation' to fill the silent, incomplete, and violent gaps within the archives.

Publications

More publications

Activities

Press-media

More press-media
Mary Steen: Kunstnerne Emilie Mundt og Marie Luplau i deres hjem p? Frederiksberg, 1885.
.. Mary Steen: Emilie Mundt and Marie Luplau in their home at Frederiksberg, Denmark, 1885.

Overblik over forskning p? RUC

Base at Roskilde University

The research project is based at the Department of Communication and Arts 

Related research units: Culture and Media Research Group // Centre for Gender, Power and Diversity Research Centre 

PhD School: Phd Programme of Communication and Arts

Degree programmes: Media and Communication // tt备用网址 in Global Humanities 

Research from Roskilde University

Research - overview

ikon for website

More about the research project

Learn more about the project "Queer women 1880-2020": 

The research project on the Roskilde University Research Portal

Project profile on Instagram

Profil

Contact

Project leader

Rikke Andreassen,
tt备用网址
Phone: +45 4674 3789
rikkean@ruc.dk