L.K. Bertram

L.K. Bertram is a curator and historian of migration, material culture, and gender/ sexuality in North American colonial history. Her new book, The Viking Immigrants: Icelandic North Americans (UTP 2020) explores the evolution of an immigrant community through everyday culture, from ghost stories and coffee pots to cake and Viking parades. Her forthcoming book, The Other Little House: Brothels, Power, and Colonial Expansion in the North American West, 1849-1890, explores race and the hidden histories of sex work economies, with a focus on the diverse economic lives of sex workers along the Western frontier. From sexpionage and anti-slavery resistance campaigns to real estate, arms, and fashion, The Other Little House seeks to illuminate the unexpected historical trajectories of sex work capital.

Bertram's curatorial work explores digital and in-gallery approaches to gendered media and histories of colonialism, trauma, and sexuality. Her current work focuses on making sex-work related archives accessible to large audiences and plans to launch a major new historical brothel map of Toronto in 2021.