A special issue of the journal Rethinking History has been published on the topic "Intimacy on the move. Historicising mobilities and sexual encounters. Rethinking History", edited by B. Gammerl, N. Papadogiannis, C. Reinecke & U. Schaper.

Introduction:

Gammerl, B., Papadogiannis, N., Reinecke, C., & Schaper, U. (2025): Intimacy on the move. Historicising mobilities and sexual encounters. Rethinking History, 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642529.2025.2490351.

Abstract

The introduction discusses the special issue’s focus on historical actors who physically crossed national borders and participated in multi-directional cross-cultural or cross-racial intimacies between 1920 and 1990. It brings research on mobilities and intimacy into dialogue and shows how scholarship on intimacy is beginning to address the spaces and routes that enable intimate encounters. To enrich such scholarship, the special issue revolves around the ways in which intimacies and mobilities were connected in the experiences and practices of people on the move who often differed in terms of class, gender and ‘race’. The introduction highlights the advantages of such an actor-centred, praxeological approach: It avoids the oversimplified juxtaposition of liberal and repressive regimes or periods; instead, it traces bodies in motion and shifts the focus from politics and infrastructures to subjects’ responses to categorisations and regulations. While demonstrating that mobility and intimacy are deeply intertwined, the introduction argues that paying attention to these connections allows us to understand them better. More specifically, the focus on practices and experiences draws attention not only to the agency of historical subjects who have navigated changing political and social conditions, but also to the fundamental malleability and fluidity of sexual regimes and identities.

Contributions to the special issue:

Dobrowolska, A. (2025). Polish Cinderella becomes a playmate. Erotic capital, mobility and the end of the Cold War. Rethinking History, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642529.2025.2490366

Ewing, C. (2025). The trials of John Stamford: gay travel, sexual harm, and Spartacus International Gay Guide. Rethinking History, 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642529.2025.2490356

Heathcote, D. (2025). ‘If you dig only Black guys, don’t bother going to East Africa:’ gay American tourists in Kenya, 1970–1978. Rethinking History, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642529.2025.2490353

Klopprogge, N. (2025). Intimate constellations: photos of African American-German intimacies in the long postwar period. Rethinking History, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642529.2025.2490345

Komaromi, P. (2025). Buying sex across the Iron Curtain: Western Men and transactional intimacy in State-Socialist Hungary during the long 1960s. Rethinking History, 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642529.2025.2490341

Shah, N. (2025). Dance and romance across racial boundaries: partnering with Filipino migrants in Seattle and Alaska in the Early 20th Century. Rethinking History, 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642529.2025.2490344