WELCOME

Welcome to Issue 41 of the Manchester Historian!

The theme of this issue is gender and identity. Such factors allow us to consider and analyse history with under-represented voices in mind. Since the social turn of the 1960s, many historians have begun to take a ‘history from below’ approach by focusing on minority perspectives rather than on histories of governments, political and military leaders, and monarchs. Unsurprisingly, many histories written before the social (and later cultural) turn centred on the stories of wealthy or powerful white men, and so, by reconsidering history from the perspective of other genders and identity groups, we are able to understand, critique and celebrate the stories and experiences of those who have been previously overlooked or written out of the history books.

In Britain, the Women’s Liberation Movement brought women’s history from the margins into the mainstream of historical thinking, seeking to trace both inequality and oppression through the past and to rediscover female experiences left out by conventional historiography. As the field developed, a gendered approach to history has provided a new lens through which to analyse a wide range of topics from sexuality, race, citizenship, and nationhood, to power and the construction of sexual difference. In this issue we are spotlighting gender and also hope to bring in questions of identity: in what ways is identity constructed and expressed, either by individuals or collective communities?

This issue brings together a collection of articles that carefully consider our chosen theme in a number of geographical contexts, covering topics such as the gay rights movement in Britain, gender and religion in Soviet Central Asia, colonial rule and queer identity in South Asia, and the Aba women’s rebellion in Nigeria. These pieces both amplify the stories of those left out of mainstream historical narratives and exemplify the significance of categories such as gender and identity as analytical tools for historians today.

We must thank Dr Kerry Pimblott, the University of Manchester History Department, the University of Manchester Graphics Support Workshop and our current Manchester Historian team for helping us envision and create the magazine’s latest issue. Additionally, we would like to thank all the writers who contributed to Issue 41. We were thrilled to receive so much interest in this issue, and we hope that the following articles reflect the enthusiasm UoM students continue to show for the Manchester Historian Happy reading!

Kerry and Sarah Editors

Our Team Editors

Kerry McCall

Sarah Cundy

Heads of Copyediting

Katie Crawfoot

Eve Henley

Copyeditors

Romy Nicholson

Georgia Casey

Katie Monaghan

Heads of Online

Thomas Walker

Erin Barnett

Head of Design

Gianna Stanley

Designers

Claire Goodall

Catherine Hart

Zerui Zhu

Amelia Heather

Heads of Marketing

Erin Carrington Ammar Vora