December 2022 – Manchester Historian

Whenever anyone imagines the “Wild West” certain images are always conjured up. A heroic gun-toting cowboy (probably John Wayne), a grand stallion, free in the desert plains, delivering justice, saving the girl. These Hollywood visions are increasingly resisted. Historians of the American West are recovering the stories of marginalised groups and individuals, helping us understand the way of life and identity of the “real Wild West”.

Simon Tseko Nkoli (1957 – 1998) was an anti-apartheid leader and gay rights campaigner in South Africa. He has a legacy of intersectional activism, winning victories against both racial and homophobic discrimination.

The Aba Women’s Rebellion in 1929, also known as the Women’s War, marked a significant development in anti-colonial resistance achieved by women in Nigeria. Following a period of restriction upon women’s participation in the political sphere, as well as newly imposed taxes, this nonviolent protest was the first major organisation of peasant women in West Africa and it is seen largely as a prelude to the later nationalist movements in Africa.

Situated in the 1980s and 90s paranormal fiction boom, The Gilda Stories imagines a diverse network of ethical vampires who transgress time and space to straddle immortal/mortal American life. The novel simultaneously engages with Black feminism, Queer theory, and Afrofuturism, establishing the nuanced identities of its Queer women of colour as principal rather than peripheral.

In reading George Mosse’s historical tracing of manliness, one gets the impression of an author who appears omniscient of masculinity’s insidiousness and is also personally encumbered by the subject matter at hand. Oppressed both by totalitarianism and, as a gay man, it is no wonder that he has a keen eye for the inner workings of stifling social structures, having been trapped within their labyrinthine chambers for large swathes of his life.