Cats, Dogs and People: Early Twentieth-Century LGBTQ+ History Beyond the Human

Queer histories tend to centre on people. But many of the now iconic figures in modern queer and trans history shared their lives with non-human companions. This paper gives centre stage to the cats and dogs that populate the queer past. It focuses on the early twentieth century, a time of growth in modern pet ownership. This is also an often returned to moment in queer history when many modern ideas about gender and sexuality gained traction and recognisable queer subcultures and cultural networks formed across Europe and North America. The paper takes as its starting point visual sources such as photographs of Wotan and Thorgils, the dachshunds of Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge, and Lotte Laserstein’s ‘Self-Portrait with Cat’ (1928). It considers how attention to specific pets expands understanding of the early twentieth-century literary and artistic subcultures that have shaped our image of queer modernity. In so doing, it will also reflect on broader questions about the limits and possibilities of cross-species companionship now and in the past and the possibilities of LGBTQ+ history beyond the human.