Afterlives

The GLQ Archive was created by the journal’s founding editors to bring unknown or obscure primary materials to the journal’s readership and thereby enlarge the archive of queer studies. One of the first items published was a medieval record of the deposition of a London sex worker in the late fourteenth century. Eventually making its way to the web, the document is now available globally and has been the subject of numerous scholarly treatments as well as popular adaptations in various media. The sex worker, John Rykener, who went by the name Eleanor and dressed in women’s clothing, has been appropriated variously as gay, as queer, and as trans. GLQ, through the Archive, ideally provides material for new creations, new theories, and productive contestation.