Gay historians

They were not based in colleges and universities, which were still quite hostile to queer studies, but community-based, which was my orientation as an activist. The Chicago-based organization produced Friendship and Freedom, the first American. The author of two monographs and multiple other volumes, Stein has recently issued a collection of previously published work as Queer Public History: Essays on Scholarly Activism University of California Press, We sat down to talk about history, activism, and making a career as a queer academic.

MS: It was. Then, more and more US history departments proved willing to do that. In , Henry Gerber founded the first gay rights organization in America: The Society for Human Rights. Claire Potter: Tell me about that young graduate student who came to the field of history already an activist.

The following 57 pages are in this category, out of 57 total. We’ve curated a list of 20 gay people in history who made a difference: great military leaders, a groundbreaking feminist monarch, revered authors, revolutionary activists. When it came time to think about graduate programs, I turned to Henry Abelove again.

Although I knew I wanted to work on gay and lesbian history, I masked that in my applications. The LGBTQ History Project features oral histories with key figures, as well as resources for further learning and activism. We know that homosexuality existed in ancient Israel simply because it is prohibited in the Bible, whereas it flourished between both men and women in Ancient Greece.

So, I began reading gay history in college. Then, after four years, I was burning out. I had several long-term relationships with women but was also attracted to men. I knew enough about academic politics to know that just because Carroll Smith-Rosenberg was in the Penn History Department did not mean she was surrounded by historians open to queer history.

But I was fortunate since there was a cluster of us: my graduate cohort included another person who had worked at Gay Community News. This category collects historians who study LGBTQ topics; for historians of any topic who self-identify as LGBTQ, see Category:LGBTQ historians.

Meet some famous faces from history, science, drama, sport, music, politics, and entertainment who identify as LGBT+. Most historians agree that there is evidence of homosexual activity and same-sex love, whether such relationships were accepted or persecuted, in every documented culture.

But my activist years in Boston and at Wesleyan enriched, enabled, and empowered me to become the historian I am. Then as it turned out, there were about five LGBT professors in the history department, and we also had visiting professors like you, who helped me understand that it was possible to make a go of this, even though it was not going to be easy.

But there was also something about how Katz wrote the book that made me realize that he was part of a network and a community of gay intellectuals. CP: How did change happen, Marc? This list may not reflect recent changes. In the one ahead of me, there was a lesbian studying the history of sexuality.

In the long arc of your career, queer history has been institutionalized, and you now occupy a prestigious chair at San Francisco State University. CP: One of your first influences was historian Jonathan Ned Katz: the opening essay in the book describes how he saved your life.

Movement jobs were absorbing, utterly wonderful, but also unsustainable. MS: I was struggling with my sexuality in college. Explore Gay Liberation's early history and learn about the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. Boston had a thriving, radical proto-queer politics in the second half of the s.

A look at s AHA internal politics uncovers the discipline’s early engagement with gay issues. I was also coming out and getting involved in gay and AIDS activism. I secretly read it in my dorm room: I struggled with a crush on a fellow student and was quite depressed.

Marc Stein: I was a history major in college, but I certainly was not ready for graduate school when I finished at Wesleyan University in Then I became the coordinating editor of Gay Community News , a national leftist gay and lesbian weekly newspaper.