Thinking Sex in the Transnational Turn: An Introduction

As an undergraduate, my initial exposure to what was then called gay history was a volume titled Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past.1 It was published in 1989, the year I started college, an early anthology in a field that was also just then emerging. I read not only about the United States, but also about pederasty in ancient Greece, lesbians in medieval Europe and early-twentieth-century Paris, homosexuality in late imperial China, male love in early modern Japan, English boarding school friendships, Russia's gay culture during the revolution, and sexuality between men in the South African mines. As I look back on the anthology now, especially in light of the current preoccupation with internationalizing historical practice, the volume certainly seems ahead of its time. Yet in contrast to the way historians now think...