LGBTRAN Project on LGBT Quaker History

I am posting at the bottom the announcement created by Mark Bowman, Project Coordinator, at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Religious Archives Network.

If you are interested, please direct all inquiries to Mark Bowman: lgbtran@gmail.com

To elaborate, we are inviting historians who have an interest in the long intersection between Queer and Quaker history to join a working group sponsored by LGBTRAN.

There is a rich history of Quaker advocacy for same-sex love throughout the 20th Century, and we welcome scholars who are cognizant of that, but researchers who can help with the tougher challenges of prior eras are particularly needed. Please refer to the details given below the picture.

--Mitchell Santine Gould, curator, LeavesOfGrass.Org

In the 20th Century, potential topics include:

• Bayard Rustin
• the Quaker Emergency Service Readjustment Center
• the queering of suffragist Alice Paul
• Christopher Isherwood's The World in the Evening
• queer Quaker bachelors such as Arthur Eddington
• the impact and legacy of 1963's British Quaker Towards a Quaker View of Sex

In the 19th Century, potential topics include:

• the Quaker reputation for extreme moral strictness
• Sarah D. Greer's treatment of transgender and same-sex issues in Quakerism
• implications of Inner Light theology for the right to sexual self-determination
• same-sex love among Quaker suffragists
• Walt Whitman's Quaker orientation
• charges of immorality during the Hicksite Schism
• ex-Quaker Henry Clapp, Free Love, Fourierism, and Whitmanism
• ex-Quaker Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford, America's first lesbian minister
• Edward Hicks's queer painting, David and Jonathan at the Stone Ezel
• intersections between Quaker theology, maritime wealth, and sailor sexuality
• Shakerism reconsidered as a Quaker schism
• Jemima Wilkinson reconsidered as a Quaker schismatic
• Emerson's avowed Quaker orientation
• Fuller's love affair with Quakeress Anna Barker
• JG Whittier's queer circle and suffragist involvement
• the love affair between "Father Taylor's" wife and Quakeress Avis Keene
• intersections between Quakerism, Spiritualism, Free Love, Fourierism, and same-sex love
• intersections between Quaker theology and Transcendentalism
• Quaker advocacy for Fanny Wright
• Quaker and ex-Quaker sex radicals such as Mary Gove Nichols and Elmina Slenker
• Quaker poet Bernard Barton and queer poet Edward FitzGerald
• queer Quaker bachelors in early Brooklyn and Long Island history
• the queer portrayals of Peleg and Bildad in Moby Dick
• queer Quakers in Cooper's The Pioneers
• "perverted" Quakers in S Weir Mitchell's Hugh Wynne

In earlier eras, potential topics include:

• the queering of martyr Mary Dyer
• Daniel Defoe's Captain Singleton
• Same-sex love and Thomas Lurting's convincement

Original message below:

New LGBT Quaker History Project

Mitchell Santine Gould, noted Walt Whitman scholar, has made a generous gift to LGBT-RAN to underwrite the development of a LGBT Quaker History project. LGBT-RAN is using these funds to facilitate a working group of historians, archivists and activists who will research and compile information on significant LGBT movements and leaders within the Society of Friends. It is expected that the result of this project will be some form of digital presentation of LGBT Quaker history. If you or someone else you know has interest in LGBT Quaker history and might be interested in participating in this working group, contact Mark Bowman.