Sarah Feustle

Titre : “By your letters you will fashion Sappho" : The collaborative creation of a lesbian-feminist culture and identity in the UK through the magazine Sappho, 1972-1981”

Direction : Charlotte Gould

Début : septembre 2024

Résumé : This project takes as its subject the British lesbian magazine Sappho, which circulated from 1972 to 1981. In developing a study of the publication and the association that created it, this project aims to trace the history of the lesbian feminist movement of the 1970s in the United Kingdom through its cultural and artistic production. In its contents, Sappho exemplifies the extent to which culture and activism were intertwined in the lesbian feminist community, while also offering us a window onto the collaborative creative practices that are emblematic of lesbian feminism.
My research is organised around three main axes: the reconstruction of a history that brings Sappho out of the archives; the analysis of the relationship between activist politics and cultural and artistic production in the lesbian movement of the 1970s in the United Kingdom, as evidenced in the pages of Sappho; and the proposal of a new way of understanding the history of contemporary lesbianism in the United Kingdom.
Despite a flourishing in queer cultural and (art) historical studies since the beginning of the 21st century, and especially an increased interest in print culture in recent years, the cultural production of the lesbian movement in the United Kingdom in the 1970s remains under-examined. This project represents the first study dedicated to the magazine Sappho, and more broadly one of the only analyses of specifically lesbian artistic and cultural production during second wave feminism in the United Kingdom.

Communications
Lesbian art and culture through Sappho, seminar of l'Observatoire de l'Aire Britannique, Université Paris Nanterre, 12 November 2025
Building transnational lesbian solidarity and culture in Sappho magazine, 1972-81, Lesbian Lives Conference, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, 24-25 October 2025
Opposing herstories: Remediating transphobia in the history of British lesbian feminism, Société des anglicistes sur les femmes*, le sexe et le genre (SAGEF) workshop, 64th congress of the SAES, Toulouse, 5-7 June 2025
Documenting the (re)imagined past: memory, archive, and intermedial storytelling in Diana Markosian’s Santa Barbara, 2025 Congress of the Société pour l’histoire des médias, Campus Condorcet, Aubervilliers, 4-6 June 2025
Sappho, les arts, et la presse lesbienne au Royaume-Uni, 1972-1981, study day of the research group Cultures et Images Lesbiennes, Césure, Paris, 2 May 2025
Sappho and the British lesbian press, 1972-1981, Doctoriales du CREA, Université Paris Nanterre, 28 April 2025

Publications
Linsey Young (ed.), Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990, Londres, Tate Publishing, 2023, Matériaux pour l'histoire de notre temps n° 155, 2025. (Book review)
Le mouvement féministe est un complot lesbien. Une anthologie (USA 1969–1974), collective translation, Fontenay-sous-Bois, Rotolux Press, 2025. (Translation)

Bourses et financements
2025: Research Support Grant, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
2025: Research travel grant, SEAC (Société d'Etudes Anglaises Contemporaines)
2025: Research travel grant, SAES (Société des Anglicistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur)