Uncovering Queer Domesticity: Intuition and Possibility as Methods of Intervention Into the Historic House Museum and Archive

Abstract

This thesis is an exploration of queer domesticity, queer possibility and intuitionin historic house museums. It develops a methodological framework intended to intervene in archival, research, interpretive and institutional practices at these sites. Using the Elfreth’s Alley Museum’s podcast The Alley Cast as a case study, I examine how utilizing a framework that understands queerness to be just as possible as straightness; that uses intuition to guide research; and queer and trans theory to denaturalize categories of sexuality and gender can uncover queer domestic patterns that unsettle and disrupt the public’s hetero- and cisnormative assumptions about the past. I argue that this is a framework that can be adopted by historic house museums in order to engage with queer history when evidence may be lacking or whose historical subjects’ gender or sexuality resists easy classification. Finally, I argue that implementing such a framework can only be done successfully if it is engaged as part of a larger institution-wide commitment to creating a socially just and responsive museum that understands the importance of sharing complicated and difficult history with its public and dismantling its own position of power and authority.