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"'Muddying the Water': Bisexuality and Identity in Modern Britain"

In this lunchtime talk, Martha will reflect on her two years as a SPAN postdoc, and share research from her book project, currently under review at Oxford University Press. The book, which will be the first historical study of bisexuality in Britain, uses oral history to explore the creation of the gay/straight binary from the perspective of those who fell beyond its limits. In particular, this talk draws on her research on ‘coming out’, and argues that the narratives of identity and ‘outness’ told by bisexuals and people attracted to multiple genders were significantly different from mainstream lesbian and gay coming out stories. There was not a single bisexual ‘coming out narrative’, but rather multiple narratives, refracted through the lens of gender, class, race and age.
 
Martha Robinson Rhodes is a SPAN Postdoctoral Fellow in Sexuality Studies, based in the History Department and Gender & Sexuality Studies Program. She has a PhD in History from the University of Birmingham (UK), and is currently working on her first monograph, a history of bisexuality in late-twentieth-century Britain.

Lunch will be provided.

Sponsored by the Sexualities Project at Northwestern (SPAN) and the Department of History at Northwestern University.