The Fredericksburg Area Museum has partnered with the James Monroe Museum for a book talk with social and cultural historian and author Dr. Jen Manion to discuss her book, “Female Husbands: A Trans History.” Saturday’s book talk is one of several events accompanying Fredericksburg Area Museum’s LGBTQ+ exhibit, “Out and About: The Walk in Closet,” which opened June 6.
The exhibit “provides programming about LGBTQ+ history,” said Theresa Cramer, Education and Public Programs Manager at the Fredericksburg Area Museum. “It spans not just in Fredericksburg, but as a contextual program.”
Manion’s book, “Female Husbands: A Trans History,” centers on “female husbands” — people assigned female genders at birth who transitioned into men and later went on to marry women, which is recorded throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.
“Dr. Manion examines newspaper articles and other primary sources to dive deeper into the history of it because LGBTQ+ has always been a part of our history — it’s just a matter of finding it within those documents,” Cramer said.
Manion will be available to sign copies of her book, which will be available for purchase at the event. After the book talk, which is free and open to the public, attendees will have the opportunity to view FAM’s “Out and About” exhibit.
“We are so excited to be able to have collaborated with the Fredericksburg Area Museum for this event,” James Monroe Museum Programs Coordinator Lindsey Crawford said. “This will help show that queer people have always been here and history shows a record of that.”
If you go
FAM and James Monroe Museum book talk with Dr. Jen Manion; Saturday, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Fredericksburg Area Museum, 907 Princess Anne Street.
