The SAGE Handbook of Queer Studies

The Sage Handbook of Queer Studies: Volume One, Foundations, Emergence and Consolidations provides a wide-ranging, globally attentive overview of the contemporary field of Queer Studies, offering readers an analytical grounding in how social worlds shape queer identities and experiences. Recognising that no single text can be exhaustive, this volume assembles a major collection of scholarship that clarifies the scope and limits of disciplinary approaches, while also making the case for a more explicitly transdisciplinary understanding of sexualities. Across its chapters, Queer Studies is approached neither as “only” cultural studies nor as a narrow set of empirical facts, but as a field that requires humanistic, sociological, and political explanation in tandem.

This first volume begins by tracing the emergence and consolidation of Queer studies within the academy, foregrounding the inseparable relationship between queer experience, activism, and the growth of scholarly legitimacy. It shows how positionality and standpoint have been foundational to the development of queer research, and how collective organising has shaped political change as well as the intellectual agendas of the field. At the same time, the volume remains attentive to the “who, when, and where” of queer studies, highlighting how academic institutionalisation has been uneven, historically concentrated in the Global North, and shaped by broader social and political conditions including decriminalisation, shifting public attitudes, and the expansion of rights-based governance frameworks.

By mapping key areas of social and political research and following their chronological development, The Sage Handbook of Queer Studies Volume One offers a structured account of how Queer Studies took shape, how it became established across disciplines, and how its successes are accompanied by important limitations. This volume is an invaluable resource for researchers seeking to deepen their foundational knowledge of Queer Studies.

Part One: Foundations and Consolidations

Part Two: Building Queer Communities: Spaces, Sex, and Identities

Part Three: The Impacts of LGBTQ Studies on Academic Disciplines