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Queer Anxieties In Washington State History, Michael Diambri

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Through the interpretative lens of “queer anxieties,” this thesis overviews the history of cultural anxieties about nonnormative gender and sexuality in Washington State since 1889. While employing a capacious “queer” framework, this study highlights the creation, dissemination, and management of individual and cultural anxieties about gender and sexuality. In doing so, this study posits how an “anxious turn” can benefit the study of Washington’s history. Ranging from the 1880s to 1990s, this work overviews a wide variety of phenomena which invoked anxiety including: sodomy laws, interracial sexual relations, cross-dressing, the creation of homosocial male spaces, gay travel, LGBT activist organizations, …