Home :: Chris Brickell

Professor Chris Brickell

BA(Hons) PhD(Well)

Much of my research focuses on the connections between sexuality, gender and identity, drawing on sociological and historical approaches. I am continuing to develop my interests in histories of same-sex sexuality and intimacy, and in various aspects of cultural change in postwar New Zealand – especially in terms of gender relations.

Latest Projects

Queer lives give rise to a vast array of objects: the things we fill our houses with, the commodities we consume at work and at play, the clothes and accessories we wear, as well as the analogue and digital technologies we use to communicate with one another.

Queer Objects

From the 'masher', 'dude' and 'dudine' to the 'flapper', 'bodgie' and 'widgie', this cultural history project investigates the changing nature of New Zealanders' 'transition to adulthood' between 1800 and the mid-twentieth century.

Teenagers

Research Projects

James Courage's Diaries

James Courage, author of A Way of Love, is one of New Zealand's most overlooked gay writers but he was one of our best.

Queer Objects

What is a 'queer object'? This highly illustrated edited collection will have an international focus and explore the historical, political and social significance of LGBT material culture.

Teenagers: The Rise of Youth Culture in New Zealand

When was the New Zealand teenager invented? This project unearths the voices of generations of young people from the start of the nineteenth century.

Two-by-Two: Men in Pairs

Connections between men take many forms; this handmade book project explores the complexities through a survey of 100 New Zealand images taken between 1880 and 1960.

Manly Affections: The Photographs of Robert Gant 1885-1915

What happens when we peer into the emotional and erotic same-sex cultures of small-town nineteenth century New Zealand? Something like this.

Mates & Lovers: A History of Gay New Zealand

A bit about the philosophy behind the research project that led to the book, published in 2008. And a link to a one-page essay written for the programme of the play that happened afterwards.

Southern Men: Gay Lives in Pictures.

Southern Men documents men's lives, travels, friendships and leisure in the years before gay liberation, showing men at war, at home and at the beach.

Research Profile

Much of my research focuses on the connections between sexuality and gender, especially in relation to masculinity and homoeroticism. My other interests include cultural politics, consumer culture, affect, objects, and the history of adolescence. I draw heavily from sociological and cultural history approaches, and from recent scholarship in cultural geography as well. I'm interested in the connections between time, space, subjectivity and social worlds, which is why my work is interdisciplinary. There are fascinating fractures and continuities between these aspects of social life, just as there are between the disciplines that examine them. The links between the personal and the social are also revealing: how do private lives tell about public issues? Photographs, as well as texts, afford us insights into intimate worlds past and present, and I have become more and more interested in the visual.

I serve on the editorial boards of the journals Sexuality and Culture and Journal of the History of Sexuality, and on the Editorial Board of Otago University Press.