Images that have helped me to frame the the conversation in relation to trans issues, in the classroom and in public lectures:

Shifting the conversation from biology to politics, and emphasizing the right to equal treatment within public/political spaces. Highlighting the ways in which someone like Marsha P. Johnson can be seen as embodying the best of the liberal poltical tradition informing the constitution.

My current research project, “Called it Macaroni”: A British Queer History of the American Revolution, emphasizes that the ways in which the ideologies that underpinned the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the American Revolution of 1776 necessarily incorporated the arugments that underpin queer and trans equality, just as they also include the ideals that underpin the emancipation of women, and the end to racial discrimination.
“Called it Macaroni” for popular audiences can be found here PrideFest 2025 Lecture
“Called it Macaroni” for academic audiences (scroll down to the post titled “NACBS 2025 – “Called it Macaroni” – Montreal”

The video below contains my presentiation “Teaching Queer History in Florida” where I explain how I teach LGBTQ History. I devised the method ten years ago, wanting to ensure that I did not present information in a way that contradicted how queer, trans, nonbinary, ace, or other students might understand themselves. This way of teaching has also proven effective in navigating our current moment in Florida. I continue to teach the class in the way that I always have. Click on the “View Recording Here” link, after clicking on “Endangered Educators” below, and my 15-minute presentation starts 55 minutes into the video.

Endangered Educators (May 21, 2025)

Public Outreach and Teaching Across Divisions:

– In 2017, I published “Class Divide: When Students Resist Material for Ideological Reasons, Start from Where They Are” as the cover story for Perspectives on History, which explores some successful techniques I used over the previous ten years to bridge ideological divisions in the classroom.

– Getting accurate queer history into The Express using Bridgerton and Queen Charlotte (and Bridgerton again).

– Engaging with the Downton Abbey audience without compromising the the accuracy of the information provided, or seeming to chastise individuals for liking the show (the academic version of the argument was published as: Charles Upchurch, “Undoing Difference: Academic History and the Downton Abbey Audience,” Journal of British Cinema and Television 16 1(January 2019): 28-41. A popular version was published in the Huffington Post).

– My previous book explored the ways in which liberal poltical arguments and liberal poltical practices played a central role in the parliamentary effort to end the death penalty for sodomy in the early nineteenth century. A 35-minute presentation, recorded for the iMagine! Belfast Festival in 2022, provides an illustrated summary of the argument.