“Working with images, biographies, political and legal histories and the sexual geographies of postwar Berlin, Jennifer V. Evans has written a highly original account of queer kinship. The German context demands attention to the uneven political commitments of LGBT communities and forces discussions of complicity as well as transgression. This is an important and timely book.” - Jack Halberstam, author of Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire
“Arguing for queer kinship as a central organizer of queer analysis and politics in the place of identity, Jennifer V. Evans makes a major intervention in queer history, queer theory, and German studies. No one will be able to write queer history without engaging with this book. Required reading.” - Laurie Marhoefer, author of Racism and the Making of Gay Rights: A Sexologist, His Student, and the Empire of Queer Love
"Asks urgent, uncomfortable questions of both 'queer' and 'history,' and insists that the two can still improve one another. . . . There is a love for queer history running through Evans’s monograph; it is not a cold, calculating deconstruction of our love for our past but instead a proposal for how we can love it better." - Ben Miller, The Baffler
"Evans offers a new tour de force, a new methodological intervention and a new way to write queer history. ... Besides her revolutionary analysis of the role of art and the senses for our understanding of the archive and temporalities, this book should be considered essential reading for all historians specializing in German history."
- Sebastien Tremblay,
German History
"[A] rich and bold monograph that encourages its readers to think, and to think historically. ... [Evans'] patient gaze unlocks histories and explanations where, before, we only had strange fragments." - Anna Hájková, New Fascism Syllabus
"A rich, urgent, and ambitious book. Jennifer Evans’ The Queer Art of History aims to fundamentally recalibrate our orientation towards the queer and trans* past." - Craig Griffiths, New Fascism Syllabus
"The Queer Art of History is more than an intervention, it is both an act of love and a vehement reminder of the traps of respectability. [It] is not only an invitation for historians to question their space of inquiry. ... It also underscores the imperative of challenging the entrenched power dynamics intrinsic to historiographic inquiry." - Sébastien Tremblay, New Fascism Syllabus
"Magnificent. ... Evans’s work is a brilliant and very persuasive articulation of the critique of identity." - Laurie Marhoefer, New Fascism Syllabus
"I found myself nodding a lot while reading The Queer Art of History. At one point I was even snapping my fingers so hard that my partner came from an adjacent room to check if I was doing alright. ... Each chapter invited me into its intellectual project and provided me with everything I needed to dwell in its purview as I was. In short, I felt at home in the capacious framework Evans outlines." - Ervin Malakaj, New Fascism Syllabus
"Seldom have I read such a mindful, emotionally, intellectually, and politically mature and thought-provoking history of post-fascist Germany. ... Evans invites us to read, think, listen, and feel with one another across divides." - Elissa Mailänder, New Fascism Syllabus
"Thought-provoking. . . ." - Catherine Baker, Journal of Gender Studies
"A radical and inspiring take on not just the past, but on the practice of history writing itself, The Queer Art of History runs full force toward the emotionality of encountering queer ancestry. The solidarity in difference, or a relationality beyond familial bonds, that Evans’ elaboration of kinship centers creates possibilities for queer history-making that encourages the historian to feel complicated about their subjects as kin." - Christopher Ewing, Journal of Family History
"In this dynamic work, Evans explores the reality and memory of queer experience in Germany since the fall of the Third Reich. . . . This book will rightfully become a staple text for any and all researchers of post-war German queer life." - William R. Jones, Gender & Society
"Jennifer Evans’s The Queer Art of History is a dazzling collection of theoretical-historical essays organized around a central claim: that (LGBTQ) identities are unsatisfactory and overdetermined lenses through which to view queer history and that we might instead be better served by a methodology of kinship." - Samuel Clowes Huneke, Journal of the History of Sexuality
"By theorizing queer kinship as an alternative model for both grappling with the queer past and imagining political solidarities in the present, Evans picks up on a strand of thought that runs across the political spectrum." - Samuel Clowes Huneke, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte
