Gay Conversion Practices in Memoir, Film and Fiction

James Bennett is an Honorary Academic at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is author of ‘Rats and Revolutionaries’: The Labour Movement in Australia & New Zealand 1890–1940 (2004) and co-editor (with Rebecca Beirne) of Making Film and Television Histories: Australia and New Zealand (I.B. Tauris, 2011). He is a specialist in the histories of medicalizing and de-medicalizing homosexuality. Marguerite Johnson is Honorary Professor in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, University of Queensland, Australia. She is the author of the second edition of Sexuality in Greek and Roman Society and Literature: A Sourcebook (2022), Ovid on Cosmetics (Bloomsbury, 2015), and co-editor (with Harold Tarrant) of Alcibiades and the Socratic Lover-Educator (Bloomsbury, 2012).

Introduction

I: Memoirs and Memoirists
1. ‘A Life of Unlearning’: The Author Reflects - Anthony Venn-Brown (author and co-founder of Freedom 2b, Australia)
2. ‘Being Gay, Being Christian’: The Professional Reflects - Stuart Edser (Counselling Psychologist, Australia)

II: Stories of Repentance and Defiance in Documentaries and Biopics
3. ‘I remember Feeling Like I was Sitting on the Wrong Side of the Circle’: Documentary Film and the Exposition of Conversion Practices - James E. Bennett (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
4. Three Films, Conversion Practices and the Paratext: I am Michael, Michael Lost and Found, and Once Gay – Matthew and Friends - Marguerite Johnson (University of Queensland, Australia)

III: Memoir, Film and Fiction
5. But I’m A Cheerleader: Awkward and Flippant, Accurate and Ground-breaking - Tom Sharples (University of Newcastle, Australia)
6. Save Me: Reconciling Queerness and Christianity - David R. Coon (University of Washington Tacoma, USA)
7. The Quiet Violence of Denying Queerness in the Novel and Film, The Miseducation of Cameron Post - Jessica Ford (University of Adelaide, Australia) and Annika Herb (University of Newcastle, Australia)
8. Defined by their Abjection: Boy Erased and the Limits of Queer Victimhood in Activist Cinema - Scott McKinnon (La Trobe University, Australia)

Conclusion
Select Bibliography
Index