Colonialisms and Queer Politics

Across global queer activism and literature from the social sciences and humanities, the impact of empires on the regulation of sexuality and gender is an emergent theme. While there has been a considerable focus on British colonial criminal law, there is a need to investigate and compare the diverse forms of power and control adopted across the histories of European empires. In Colonialisms and Queer Politics, Sonia Corrêa, Gustavo Gomes da Costa, and Matthew Waites provide a groundbreaking comparative analysis of empires and colonialities with respect to sexuality and gender diversity. Including contributions from an international team of authors, chapters focus on eleven empires: Portuguese, Spanish, British, French, Dutch, Ottoman, Russian, Belgian, German, Italian, and United States. Starting from the fifteenth century, authors explore how colonial racial hierarchies, gender norms, and heteronormativity structured relations between colonizing and colonized societies. The chapters reveal extreme variation in the regulation of sexualities, genders, and race, and shed light on the impacts of religious differences across colonialisms. The chapters also investigate continuing colonialities, particularly effects on contemporary governmental regulation and LGBTIQ+ activisms. By comparing both the histories and legacies of empires following formal decolonizations, Colonialisms and Queer Politics offers an essential contribution to the study and advancement of contemporary queer politics.

Sonia Corrêa is a Research Associate at the Brazilian Interdisciplinary Association for AIDS (ABIA), where she co-chairs the Sexuality Policy Watch Program. She has been involved, since the late 1970s, in research and advocacy activities related to gender, sexuality, health, and human rights. Since 2018, her research has focused on anti-gender politics in Latin America and globally. Corrêa has published extensively in Portuguese, English, and Spanish, and is a member of the editorial board of the Palgrave Macmillan book series, Global Queer Politics. Gustavo Gomes da Costa is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) and Visiting Scholar at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). His research is on social movements, sexual and LGBT rights, anti-gender politics, elections and political parties, citizenship, homophobia, and human rights in Latin America, southern Africa, and Europe. He has published in International Politics; Sexuality & Culture; International Review of Sociology; Revista Brasileira de Ciência Política; Contemporânea - Revista de Sociologia; Sexualidad, Salud y Sociedad - Revista Latinoamericana; and Physis. Matthew Waites is Reader in Sociological and Cultural Studies in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow. He is the author of The Age of Consent: Young People, Sexuality and Citizenship and co-editor (with Corinne Lennox) of Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the Commonwealth: Struggles for Decriminalisation and Change. He co-edited the collection The Global Politics of LGBT Human Rights in Contemporary Politics, and authored articles in Current Sociology; International Politics; and the Journal of Genocide Research. He is also co-editor of the Palgrave Macmillan book series, Global Queer Politics.