Militz-Frielink Hanhardt

In Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and The Politics of Violence, Christina B. Hanhardt attempts to conduct interdisciplinary research merging Gay and Lesbian Studies, Urban Studies, and American Studies. In this book, Hanhardt interrogates the ways in which "neighborhood-based convergence of anticrime and LGBT rights strategies came to pass"(p.3).  Starting with the 1960s as a historical point of analysis, she conducts a genealogy of discourse about gay neighborhoods, violence, and various activist/community organizations in New York and San Francisco. She further demonstrates how LGBT movement politics reinforce existing racialized, gendered, and class hierarchies and the contradictions therein.

I found Hanhardt's work to be the most difficult to read of the entire reading list this semester.  Unlike Allen's or Tichtin's work, Hanhardt's writing failed to engage me at any level.  I found her syntax and diction too repetitive, the tone of her writing flat, and the imagery lacking of any visceral quality.  Her writing style reminded me of the ones used in boring  history basal books I encountered in high school during early 1990s. The only parts I found useful were the figures (i.e. the infographics, posters, and photos) Hanhardt mined from various archive collections and societies in the U.S.  These figures did a better job conveying the main points Hanhardt tried to get across in her writing.

Generally, I did not find Handhardt's work to be helpful to my dissertation or field of study, other than her ability to weave the history of a movement through an urban lens within a queer theoretical framework.  I can see why her book was picked for this class as she did successfully write from the intersection of various theories and disciplines; Hanhardt just lacked the ability to convey the quality of her research style through her writing as her style was bland, flat and disengaging. When I read the title, I had my hopes up for another book like Tichtin's.  I anticipated finding some qualitative interviews woven throughout the fabric of her writing or perhaps some autoethnography to reinforce her experiences, yet I was left disappointed with what I perceive to be a boring take on Gay neighborhood history. To that end, Handhart's work could have been so much more engaging as this topic is very interesting and deserves much more attention in academia.