Making a Scene

Liz Millward is an associate professor of Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Manitoba. Her work on lesbian place-making has been published in Gender, Place and Culture, Feminist Media Studies, Women's History Review, and Australian Feminist Studies. Her book Women in British Imperial Airspace, 1922-1937 won the Canadian Women's Studies Association Annual Book Prize in 2010.

• IntroductionPart 1: Creating Places1 "The Lesbian, Drinking, Is Never at Her Best": Beer Parlours, Taverns, and Bars2 "No Drugs, No Straights": Members-Only Clubs3 "Let's Decide What We Are – A Drop-In or a Café with Entertainment": BuildingsPart 2: Overcoming Geography4 "It Was an Incredible Conference": Getting Together5 "An Event That Is Talked About as Far Away as Toronto": Claiming Public Space6 "Be Daring – Live the Unbelievable and Challenging Life of a Rural Lesbian!": Outside the Big CityConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex

This well-researched study of twenty formative years of lesbian community-building in Canada covers a lot of ground … Millward has captured the flavor of an era by combining data from previous studies with eyewitness accounts and black-and-white photos from private collections. She proposes a symbiotic relationship between self-defined lesbians and their "scene" or social milieu: a lesbian identity requires a social context, and vice versa. - Jean Roberta (The Gay and Lesbian Review)