Tag: history

The British Queer History of the American Revolution

On By Charles UpchurchIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

In September, 2026, the Journal of British Studies published my article “‘Called It Macaroni’: A British Queer History of the American Revolution,” in their FORUM: 1776. Views from the British World series. Timed to coincide with the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence that launched a revolution that created the United States of America, this series of articles complicates traditional narratives of this transformative event by situating it in a larger British world context. My article in this series outlines the methodologies informing and content of my current book project, “Called it Macaroni”: A British Queer History of the American Revolution, as I presented them in public-facing lectures for Tallahassee Pridefest in 2025 and 2026. This project examines a range of individuals, from the lowest to the highest social ranks on both sides of the American Revolution, who expressed feelings of same-sex desire or trans gender. Also, more importantly, it explores the ideologies that underpinned the American Revolution, and highlights the ways in which they contain the basis for queer and trans inclusion, as well as supporting critiques of injustice around race, class, gender, and citizenship more broadly. I argue for the value of starting the story of the American Revolution in Britain in the seventeenth century and ask whether doing so, and placing aspirational ideals at the heart of the narrative, can provide a framework for a simultaneously optimistic, historically accurate, and broadly inclusive narrative that does not misrepresent any group’s struggle for the sake of forging a consensus.

A version of this argument was published in Ms. Magazine, as a part of its “Founding Feminists” series in March 2026, in an article titled “Claiming the Revolution: Gender, Sexuality, and the Radical Promise of 1776.” The detailed (c. 14,000 words) academic framework supporting the argument was published in the Journal of British Studies, in their “Debating the Field” series, in an article titled “Rethinking Periodization, Priorities, and Liberalism in British Queer History.”

These ideas were first presented to the public in talks were delivered as a part of Tallahassee Pridefest, in the Florida Capital, “‘Called it Macaroni’: Citizenship, LGBTQ History, and the American Revolution” in March 2025, and “Claiming the Revolution: Feminists, LGBTQ People, and 1776” in March 2026, and both were well received. The book that is coming out of this project will be my third, and is an outgrowth of my broader research as a Professor of British History at Florida State University.

Does your town, city, or organization need a LGBTQ history talk celebrating the 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution, emphasizing what unites us all as Americans? I’m making these lectures freely available to anyone who wants to use them (I’ll send you the PowerPoints, or invite me, and I can deliver one in person).

For an example of my public lectures on my research, there is a recording of the 35-minute presentation I did for the iMagine! Belfast Festival in 2022 on my previous book, which explored the ways in which liberal political arguments and liberal political practices played a central role in the parliamentary effort to end the death penalty for sodomy in early nineteenth century Britain. The talk provides an illustrated summary of the argument.

Other examples of my public outreach work include commentary in The Express on queer history in relation to Bridgerton and Queen Charlotte (and Bridgerton again). I was also interviewed about Outlander’s Lord John Grey, with stories appearing in The Daily Express, The Scottish Daily Express, The Irish Star, Glasgow Live, and The Daily Record.

I’ve written about Downton Abbey in a way that I think of as “fan non-fiction.” 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.

British History – Extended Thematic List, 2026 Update

On By Charles UpchurchIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Thematic Groups in Chronological Order (c. 130 books)

The “British History – Extended and Thematic” list began as my graduate reading list in the early 2000s, and has been updated in a less that systematic way at various times in the years since. In the Spring 2026 semester, one of my grad students and I met weekly, and did a thorough update together. Please let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions.

EMPIRE

c. 1500-1750

Games, Alison. The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion, 1560-1660. Oxford University Press, 2008.

Hanna, Mark. Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570-1740. University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

Lloyd, T.O., The British Empire 1558–1995. Second Edition. Oxford University Press, 1996.

Kupperman, Karen. The Jamestown Project. Harvard University Press, 2007.

Cain, P. J. and A. G. Hopkins. British Imperialism: 1688-2015. Third Edition. Routledge, 2016.

Armitage, David. Ideological Origins of the British Empire. Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Hunt, Margaret. “The 1689 Mughal Siege of East India Company Bombay: Crisis and Historical Erasure,” History Workshop Journal, 84 (Autumn 2017): 149-169.

Morgan, Jennifer. Reckoning With Slavery: Gender, Kinship, and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic. Duke University Press, 2021.

Pomeranz, Kenneth. The Great Divergence: China, Europe, And the Making Of The Modern World Economy. Princeton University Press, 2000.

c. 1750-1850

Satia, Priya. Empire of Guns: The Violent Makings of the Industrial Revolution. Stanford University Press, 2020.

Stanford, James. The Case of Ireland: Commerce, Empire and the European Order, 1750-1848. Cambridge University Press, 2022.

Conway, Stephen. War State, and Society in Mid-Eighteen-Century Britain and Ireland. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Hall, Catherine. Lucky Valley: Edward Long and The History of Racial Capitalism (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

Cookson, J. E. The British Armed Nation 1793-1815. Clarendon Press, 1997.

Drescher, Seymour. Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

Brown, Christopher. Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism. University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

Epstein, James. Scandal of Colonial Rule: Power and Subversion in the British Atlantic during the Age of Revolution. Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Stern, Philip J. Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism. Harvard University Press, 2023.

Wilson, Kathleen. The Island Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century. Routledge, 2003.

Bailyn, Bernard. Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Harvard University Press, 1967.

Morgan, Edmund. Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America. W. W. Norton, 1988.

Jasanoff, Maya. Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary War. Vintage Books, 2011.

Colley, Linda. Captives: Britain, Empire and the World 1600-1850. Jonathan Cape, 2002.

Linebaugh, Peter and Marcus Rediker. The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. Beacon Press, 2000.

Burnard, Trevor. Jamaica in the Age of Revolution. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020.

Sasson, Tehila, James Vernon, Miles Ogborn, Priya Satia, Catherine Hall, “Britain and the World: A New Field?” The Journal of British Studies, 57 4 (November 2018): 677-708.

Turner, Sasha. Contested Bodies: Pregnancy, Childrearing, And Slavery in Jamaica. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017.

MacKenzie, John M. “The British Empire: Ramshackle or Rampaging? A Historiographical Reflection,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 431 (March 2015): 99-124.

Kennedy, Dane. “The Imperial History Wars.” Journal of British Studies, 54 1 (January 2015): 5-22.  

Rothschild, Emma. The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History. Princeton University Press, 2012.

Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837. Yale University Press, 1992.

Linebaugh, Peter. Red Round Globe Hot Burning: A Tale at the Crossroads of Commons & Closure, of Love & Terror, of Race & Class, and of Kate and Ned Despard. University of California Press, 2019.

Inikori, Joseph. Capitalism and Slavery, Fifty Years After: Eric Williams and the Changing Explanations of the Industrial Revolution. Peter Lang, 2000.

c. 1850-Present

Rappaport, Erika. A Thirst for Empire: How Tea Shaped the Modern World. Princeton University Press, 2017.

Mehta, Uday Singh. Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteen Century British Liberal Thought. University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Streets, Heather. Martial Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857. Manchester University Press, 2011.

Imy, Kate. Faithful Fighters: Identity And Power in the British Indian Army. Stanford University Press, 2020.

Chatterjee, Partha. Black Hole of Empire: History of a Global Practice of Power. Princeton University Press, 2012.

Sinha, Mrinalini. Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire. Duke University Press, 2006.

Ocobock, Paul. An Uncertain Age: The Politics of Manhood in Kenya. Ohio University Press, 2017.

Edgerton, David. Warfare State: Britain, 1920-1970. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Pedersen, Susan. The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire. Oxford University Press, 2015.

Burton, Antoinette. The Trouble with Empire: Challenges to Modern British Imperialism. Oxford University Press, 2015.

Barak, On. Powering Empire: How Coal Made the Middle East and Sparked Global Carbonization. University Of California Press, 2020.

Ward, Stuart. British Culture and the End of Empire. Manchester University Press, 2001.

Linstrum, Erik. Age Of Emergency: Living With Violence at the End of the British Empire. Oxford University Press, 2023.

Carrol, John M. Edge of Empire: Chinese Elites and British Colonials in Hong Kong. Hong Kong University Press, 2007.

Darwin, John. The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of The British World-System 1830-1970. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

ECONOMICS

c. 1650-1830

Cain, P. J. and A. G. Hopkins. British Imperialism: 1688-2015. Third Edition. Routledge, 2016.

Davidoff, Leonore and Catherine Hall. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850. University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Thompson, E.P. Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture. The New Press, 1991. [Thompson, E. P.  “Time, Work, Discipline and Industrial Capitalism.” Past & Present 38, 1, (December 1967): 56–97; Thompson, E. P. “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century.” Past & Present 50 (February 1971): 76-136.]

De Vries, Jan. The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present. Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Abridged by Laurence Dickey. Hackett Publishing Company, 1993.

Carruthers, Bruce C. City of Capital: Politics and Markets in the English Financial Revolution. Princeton University Press, 1996.

Rothschild, Emma. Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, And the Enlightenment. Harvard University Press, 2001.

Foucault, Michel. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978-1979. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Mokyr, Joel. The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History Of Britain, 1700-1850. Yale University Press, 2009.

Berg, Maxine. Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century England. Oxford University Press, 2007.

c. 1830-1930

Satia, Priya. Empire of Guns: The Violent Makings of the Industrial Revolution. Stanford University Press, 2020.

Trentmann, Frank. Free Trade Nation. Oxford University Press, 2008.

Wrigley, E.A. Energy and the English Industrial Revolution. Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Wilson, Kathleen, Ervand Abrahamian, and Selina Todd. “Feature: The Making of the English Working Class, Fifty Years On.” History Workshop Journal 76 (2013): 251-65.

Griffin, Emma. Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy. Yale University Press, 2020.

Beckert, Sven. Empire of Cotton: A New History of Global Capitalism. University of London, 2014.

Barak, On. Powering Empire: How Coal Made the Middle East And Sparked Global Carbonization. University Of California Press, 2020.

Hindmarch-Watson, Katie. Serving a Wired World: London’s Telecommunications Workers and the Making of an Information Capital. University of California Press, 2020.

c. 1930-Present

Edgerton, David. Warfare State: Britain, 1920-1970. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Hicks, Marie. Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lots Its Edge in Computing. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2017.

Tomlinson, Jim. “De-industrialization Not Decline: A New Meta-narrative for Post-war British History.” Twentieth Century British History, 27, 1 (2016): 76–99.

Milward, Alan S. The European Rescue of The Nation-State. Second Edition. Routledge, 2005.

Saunders, Robert. Yes to Europe! The 1975 Referendum and Seventies Britain. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Jackson, Ben and Robert Saunders. Making Thatcher’s Britain. Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Ortolano, Guy. Thatcher’s Progress: From Social Democracy to Market Liberalism through an English New Town. Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Seldon, Anthony. Blair’s Britain, 1997-2007. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

GENDER AND SEXUALITY

Ancient-Medieval

Crompton, Louis. Homosexuality & Civilization. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003.

DeVun, Lean. The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance. Columbia University Press, 2021.

Williams, Craig A. Roman Homosexuality. Oxford University Press, 2010.

Clark, Anna. A. History of European Sexuality. Routledge, 2008.

c. 1700-1850

Kent, K. Susan. Gender and Power in Britain, 1640-1990. Routledge, 1999.

Morgan, Jennifer. Reckoning With Slavery: Gender, Kinship, and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic. Duke University Press, 2021.

Foster, Thomas A. Rethinking Rufus: Sexual Violations of Enslaved Men. University of Georgia Press, 2019.

Fuentes, Marissa. Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.

Davidoff, Leonore and Catherine Hall. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850. University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Scott, Joan W. Sex and Secularism. Princeton University Press, 2017.

Scott, Joan W. “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.” The American Historical Review 91, 5 (1986): 1053–75.

Manion, Jen. Female Husbands: A Trans History. Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Clark, Anna. Scandal: The Sexual Politics of the British Constitution. Princeton University Press, 2004.

Snorton, C. Riley. Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity. University of Minnesota Press, 2017.

Steinbach, Susie. Women in England 1760-1914: a social history. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

c. 1850-1930

Hinchy, Jessica. Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India: The Hijra, c. 1850-1900. Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Deslandes, Paul R. Oxbridge Men: British Masculinity and the Undergraduate Experience, 1850-1920. Indiana University Press, 2005.

Koven, Seth. The Matchgirl and the Heiress. Princeton University Press, 2015.

Ayers, Pat, Et Al. Men And Masculinities In Modern Britain: A History For The Present. Edited By Matt Houlbrook Et Al., Manchester University Press, 2024.

Tosh, John. A Man’s Place: Masculinity And the Middle-Class Home In Victorian England. Yale University Press, 2008.

Nic Dháibhéid, Caoimhe. “National Orphans and a Nation’s Trauma: Experience, Emotions, and the Children of the 1916 Easter Rising Martyrs.” Journal of British Studies 62, no. 3 (2023): 687–712.

Vicinus, Martha. Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928. The University of Chicago Press, 2004

Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (Basic Books, 1994).

Bloomfield, Jacob. Drag: A British History (University of California Press, 2023).

c. 1930-Present

Cartwright, Ryan Lee. Peculiar Places: A Queer Crip History of White Rural Nonconformity. University of Chicago Press, 2011.

Ocobock, Paul.  An Uncertain Age: The Politics of Manhood in Kenya. Ohio University Press, 2017.

Canaday, Margot. The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America. Princeton University Press 2009.

Walkowitz, Judith R. Nights Out: Life in Cosmopolitan London. Yale University Press, 2012.

Cook, Matt. Queer Domesticities Homosexuality and Home Life In Twentieth-Century London. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Meyerowitz, Joanne. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Harvard University Press, 2002.

JEWISH PEOPLE IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE

c. 1485-Present  

Katz, David. Jews in the History of England, 1485-1850. Clarendon Press, 1997.

Endelman, Todd M. The Jews of Britain, 1656 to 2000. University of California Press, 2002.

Grell, Ole Peter, Jonathan I. Israel, and Nicholas Tyacke, Editors. From Persecution to Toleration: The Glorious Revolution and Religion in England. Clarendon Press, 1991.

Feldman, David. Englishmen and Jews: Social Relations and Political Culture 1840–1914. Yale University Press, 1994.

Alderman, Geoffrey. Modern British Jewry. Clarendon Press, 1992.

Chasin, Stephanie. British Jews and Imperial Service: Nationalism, Pan-Islamism and Zionism in Mandate Palestine and Colonial India. I.B Tauris, 2025.

Fishman, Louis A. Jews and Palestinians in the Late Ottoman Era, 1908-1914: Claiming the Homeland. Edinburgh University Press, 2020.

Robinson-Dunn, Diane Liga. An Empire of Many Cultures: Bahá’ís, Muslims, Jews and the British State, 1900-20. Manchester University Press, 2025.

Snyder, Saskia Coenen. A Brilliant Commodity: Diamonds And Jews in a Modern Setting. Oxford University Press, 2022.

Rutland, Suzanne D. The Jews in Australia. 1st Ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005

Imber, Elizabeth E. Uncertain Empire: Jews, Nationalism, and the Fate of British Imperialism. Princeton University Press, 2025.

Schaffer, Gavin. An Unorthodox History: British Jews since 1945. Manchester University Press, 2025.

DOMESTIC POLITICS AND GOVERNMENTALITY

c. 1688-1800

Pincus, Steve. 1688: The First Modern Revolution. Yale University Press, 2009.

Brewer, John. The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688-1783. Harvard University Press, 1990.

Tullett, William. “Political Engines: The Emotional Politics of Bells in Eighteenth-Century England.” Journal of British Studies 24 (July 2020): 555-581.

Wilson, Kathleen. The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture, and Imperialism in England, 1715-1785. Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Bailyn, Bernard. Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Harvard University Press, 1967.

Clark, Anna. Scandal: The Sexual Politics of the British Constitution. Princeton University Press, 2004.

Porter, Roy. The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment. W.W. Norton, 2000.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Pantheon Books, 1977.

Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837. Yale University Press, 1992.

McCalman, Iain. Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries, and Pornographers in London, 1795-1840. Clarendon Press, 1993.

Burns, Arthur, and Joanna Innes. editors. Rethinking The Age of Reform: Britain 1780-1850. Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Hilton, Boyd. Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1785-1865. Clarendon Press, 1992.

c. 1800-1900

Altick, D. Richard. The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900. Ohio State University Press, 1957.

Otter, Chris. The Victorian Eye: A Political History of Light and Vision in Britain, 1800-1910. University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Griffin, Ben. The Politics of Gender in Victorian Britain: Masculinity, Political Culture and the Struggle for Women’s Rights. Cambridge University Press, 2012. 

King, Steven, et al. In Their Own Write: Contesting the New Poor Law, 1834-1900. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022.

Hall, Catherine, Keith McClelland, and Jane Rendall. Defining the Victorian Nation: Class, Race, Gender and the Reform Act of 1867. Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Nead, Lynda. Victorian Babylon: People, Streets and Images in Nineteenth-Century London. Yale University Press, 2000.

Joyce, Patrick. The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City. Verso, 2003.

Ismay, Penelope. Trust Among Strangers: Friendly Societies in Modern Britain. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Vernon, James. Distant Strangers: How Britain Became Modern. University of California Press, 2014.

Gunn, Simon. “From Hegemony to Governmentality: Changing Conceptions of Power in Social History.” Journal of Social History 39, 3 (Spring 2006): 705-20.

Taylor, Vanessa and Frank Trentmann. “Liquid Politics: Water and the Politics of Everyday Life in the Modern City.” Past & Present 211, 1(May 2011): 199-241.

c. 1900-1995

Trentmann, Frank. Free Trade Nation: Commerce, Consumption, and Civil Society in Modern Britain. Oxford University Press, 2008.

Kool, Simon. Intimate Subjects: Touch and Tangibility in Britain’s Cerebral Age. University of Chicago Press, 2024.

Conekin, Becky, Frank Mort, and Chris Waters. Editors. Moments of Modernity: Reconstructing Britain 1945-1964. Rivers Oram Press, 1999.

Mandler, Peter. The Crisis of the Meritocracy: Britain’s Transition to Mass Education Since the Second World War. Oxford University Press, 2020.

Collins, Michael. Windrush Cricket: Imperial Culture, Caribbean Migration, and the Remaking of Postwar England. Oxford University Press, 2025.

Zalmanovich, Tal. Broadcasting Apartheid: British Television and the Anti-Apartheid Campaign, 1950-1990. Oxford University Press, 2026.

Saunders, Robert. Yes to Europe! The 1975 Referendum and Seventies Britain. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Rutgers Symposium – April 2026

On By Charles UpchurchIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

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. Also, highlighting the ways in which someone like Marsha P. Johnson can be seen as embodying the best of the liberal political tradition informing the constitution. Including the argument in public lectures for the shared values of Johnson and “Florida Man” in relation to ideas of personal freedom.

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 arguments 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 can be found here NACBS 2025 “Called it Macaroni” – Montreal
I focused on a different aspect of this research in my 2026 Tallahassee Pridefest lecture, “Claiming the Revolution: Feminists, LGBTQ People, and 1776.”

A version of one of these talks was published in Ms. Magazine, as a part of its “Founding Feminists” series in March 2026, in an article titled “Claiming the Revolution: Gender, Sexuality, and the Radical Promise of 1776.”

The detailed academic framework supporting the argument has just been published in the Journal of British Studies, in their “Debating the Field” series, in an article titled “Rethinking Periodization, Priorities, and Liberalism in British Queer History.”


The video below contains my presentation “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.

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).
I was also interviewed about Outlander’s Lord John Grey, with stories appearing in The Daily Express, The Scottish Daily Express, The Irish Star, Glasgow Live, and The Daily Record. 

– 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.

LGBTQ History of the American Revolution Talks

On By Charles UpchurchIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Does your town, city, or organization need a LGBTQ history talk celebrating the 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution, emphasizing what unites us all as Americans? I’ve developed (and presented) two, they can be found here and here, and I’m making them freely available to anyone who wants to use them (I’ll send you the PowerPoints, or invite me, and I can deliver one in person).

A version of one of these talks was published in Ms. Magazine, as a part of its “Founding Feminists” series in March 2026, in an article titled “Claiming the Revolution: Gender, Sexuality, and the Radical Promise of 1776.” The detailed academic framework supporting the argument has just been published in the Journal of British Studies, in their “Debating the Field” series, in an article titled “Rethinking Periodization, Priorities, and Liberalism in British Queer History.”

Both talks were delivered as a part of Tallahassee Pridefest, in the Florida Capital, “‘Called it Macaroni’: Citizenship, LGBTQ History, and the American Revolution” in March 2025, and “Claiming the Revolution: Feminists, LGBTQ People, and 1776” in March 2026, and both were well received. The book that is coming out of this project, ‘Called it Macaroni’: A British Queer History of the American Revolution, will be my third, and is an outgrowth of my broader research as a Professor of British History at Florida State University.

The values at the core of the tax revolt that led to the American Revolution are the same as those at the center of the calls for justice around race, class, gender, and sexuality. These lectures celebrate the radical ideas at the heart of the American Revolution, telling that story in a way that stresses what brings Americans together across the political spectrum. 

Please share this if you think it’s worthwhile. Contact me to receive the PowerPoints and text for either lecture (or if you would like to discuss my delivering one of them in person).