Churnjeet Mahn

Desi Queers reveals how diasporic South Asians have shaped LGBTQ+ movements and communities in Britain, from the 1970s to the present day. Weaving the history of 1980s anti-racism with the emergence of Black LGBTQ+ and feminist coalitions, this book highlights landmark moments in British queer life and culture through South Asian lives, and illuminates British histories of colour through queer politics and creativity. From the Gay Black Group to Haringey Council's pioneering Lesbian and Gay Unit, desi queers were at the centre of anti-homophobic direct action in the 1980s, including the historic 'Smash the Backlash' demo against bigotry. This activism birthed key grassroots groups of the 1980s and 1990s, such as Shakti and Naz, whose founders and early members opened a path of creative resistance to the intersecting violence of racism and homophobia--a path of solidarity echoing through the twenty-first century. These spaces and networks have been a refuge for people doubly marginalised in Britain--by experiences of homophobia within South Asian communities, and by the whiteness of mainstream queer scenes. Drawing on artistic creations, archives and oral history, Desi Queers celebrates rich traditions of social and cultural activism alongside stories of everyday life among Britain's LGBTQ+ South Asians.

Beginning with the publication of the first Murray guidebook to Greece in 1840 and ending with Virginia Woolf's journey to Athens, this book offers a genealogy of British women's travel literature about Greece. Churnjeet Mahn recounts the women's first-hand experiences of the sites and sights of antiquity, analyzing travel accounts by archaeologists, ethnographers, journalists, and tourists to chart women's renderings of Modern Greece through a series of discursive lenses. Mahn's offers insights into the importance of the Murray and Baedeker guidebooks; how knowledge of Greece and Classical Studies were used to justify colonial rule of India at the same time that Agnes Smith Lewis and Jane Ellen Harrison used Greece as a symbol of women's emancipation; British women's production of the first anthropological accounts of Modern Greece; and fin-de-siècle women who asserted their right to see and claim antiquity at the same time that the safety of the independent lady traveler was being called into question by the media.

Beginning with the publication of the first Murray guidebook to Greece in 1840 and ending with Virginia Woolf's journey to Athens, this book offers a genealogy of British women's travel literature about Greece. Churnjeet Mahn recounts the women's first-hand experiences of the sites and sights of antiquity, analyzing travel accounts by archaeologists, ethnographers, journalists, and tourists to chart women's renderings of Modern Greece through a series of discursive lenses. Mahn's offers insights into the importance of the Murray and Baedeker guidebooks; how knowledge of Greece and Classical Studies were used to justify colonial rule of India at the same time that Agnes Smith Lewis and Jane Ellen Harrison used Greece as a symbol of women's emancipation; British women's production of the first anthropological accounts of Modern Greece; and fin-de-siècle women who asserted their right to see and claim antiquity at the same time that the safety of the independent lady traveler was being called into question by the media.