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Accepted Paper:
To queerly go: queer studies, space histories, and space futures
Lisa Ruth Rand
(California Institute of Technology)
Eleanor Armstrong
(Stockholm University)
This paper assesses the methods, priorities, and practices of the history of spaceflight through a queer lens, with the aim of offering new directions and potentials to expand the field beyond cis-heteronormative limits.
Long abstract:
We wish to assess the methods, priorities, and practices of the history of spaceflight through a queer lens. Despite strides towards LGBTQ+ inclusion and representation in broader cultural contexts, to date there haven’t been any openly queer active-duty astronauts. Taking as a point of departure the posthumous outing of Sally Ride and Anne McClain's outing after returning from the International Space Station, this paper will reflect on sexuality in space culture. We aim to bring into focus a larger treatment of queer themes within the histories of spaceflight, by emphasizing LGBTQ+ histories and current lives in space domains, and as or more importantly by embracing queer theory perspectives to pluralize, expand, and enhance the practice and scholarship of space politics, technology, and culture into the twenty-first century. We will offer pathways towards a reparative historiography that reconsiders the queer potentialities of existing space histories and asks what may come next for queer space futures.