Cruising the 1970s: Unearthing Pre-HIV/AIDS Queer Sexual Cultures

'Cruising the 1970s' is a three-year pan-European project funded by HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area). It involves research teams in Germany, Poland, Spain, and the UK. The project asks: how can queer cultural resources from the 1970s that have been neglected or ignored offer possibilities for political change in the present day?

The 1970s are often characterised as a decade of gay liberation, bookended by the Stonewall riots of 1969 and the identification of HIV/AIDS in 1981. This narrative is an American one, however, and it prioritises a particular understanding of the decade in which queer people began to fight for particular rights (for marriage, equal rights to employment, and so on). 'Cruising the 70s' asks: how was this decade experienced differently in several different European countries? How were these experiences shaped by the power of particular institutions (religion, politics, the law)? Aside from a liberationist politics, what other visions of future queer life were being discussed and proposed? What traces of queer experience in the 1970s have been archived, and what is in danger of being lost? And what uses can present-day queer people make of resources and ideas from this period?