Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Everybody's Magazine, Janet Butler Munch

Publications and Research

This article gives an overview on Everybody's Magazine (1899-1928) which focused on American society, and helped shape public opinion through investigative reporting and muckraking thereby stimulating reforms of societal problems. The magazine also made fine literature available to the masses, attracting the best writers of the day.

The Source Of Hip, Shelly J. Eversley

Publications and Research

This essay situates Norman Mailer's "The White Negro" (1957) and Jack Keroauc's The Subterraneans (1958) in the context of 1950s racial integration and the transformative potential of interracial sex. It argues that both authors' terms, "beat" and "hip," depend on the idea of "the Negro" whose status allows them to imagine a counter culture essential to their midcentury articulations of individual integrity and creative freedom.

Expanding Horizons, Alisa Solomon

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Happy New Year! Welcome to the new semester! Welcome to CLAGS's second decade! Such greetings would be heartfelt under any circumstances, but the artifices of the calendar seem especially useful now as we seek new beginnings after the trauma of the Fall.

We Weren’T Always White: Race And Ethnicity In Italian/American Literature, Fred L. Gardaphé

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Lunatic's Fancy And The Work Of Art, Shelly J. Eversley

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Discovering, Again, The Meaning Of "American", Peter Hegarty

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

In his essay, "The discovery of what it means to be an American," James Baldwin described how his exile in Paris led him to new self-knowledge about his national identity. Baldwin left the US to survive what he called "the color problem," but was surprised to find he shared a sense of being "not at home" with white Americans in Europe. He was American in ways he had not realized. Exile afforded him intellectual freedom, but his growing consciousness of the French-Algerian war led him to understand that "there are no untroubled countries in this fearfully troubled world." Leaving home …

Why Do They Strike Us?, James Polchin

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Over the past two years since the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie Wyoming, the circumstances of his death have held a symbolic place in the story of violence against gay men and lesbians nationally. University of Wyoming Professor Beth Loffreda's book Losing Matt Shepard: Life and Politics in the Aftermath of Anti-Gay Murder is on the "Lambda Book Report" best-sellers list and MTV has recently premiered "Anatomy of a Hate Crime: The Matthew Shepard Story" that dramatized the events of October 6th, 1998. The telling and retelling of Shepard's murder in both academic books and popular culture suggests …

Double Margins: Yolanda Martines-San Miguel Discusses Lgbtq Hispanic Caribbean Lit, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

In her talk, "Families of Desire: Migration and Sexuality in New York's Caribbean Enclaves," Yolanda Martinez-San Miguel explored the representation of same-sex affective and sexual relationships in the works of one lesbian and two gay Hispanic Caribbean authors, all of whom migrated to New York from their island of origin and who portray this Diasporic experience in their writing. Her presentation forms part of a broader, book-length project on cultural representations of migration among Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and New York, including literature, popular music, graffiti, and photography.

On The Double: The Hidden (Queer And Jewish) Career Of Danny Kaye, Michael Bronski

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Last year, in the early stages of applying for the Duberman Fellowship, I began by trying to discern a topic, a subject, that would involve me intellectually as well as emotionally. As a free-lance writer and cultural critic I am, more frequently than not, assigned subjects, books, movies, performances by my editors. If I received the Duberman I wanted to research and write about something that resonated with my life and current interests.

The Pitchman In Print: Oral Performance Art In Text And Context, Joseph Ugoretz

Publications and Research

Oral performance art, patterned performative speech for an audience, is perhaps the oldest and most ubiquitous human art form. Specific instances of this art include the performances of griots and guslars, troubadors and shamans, as well as rappers and riddlers, preachers and politicians. While this art form is by definition oral, it is also the case that, frequently, literary art has represented oral performance art. There is written art which depicts oral art, which describes it, appropriates it, criticizes and co‑opts it.

In this dissertation, I define oral performance art as constituting a separate and unique artistic genre, one which …

Excerpt From Wrestling With Rustin, Or The Left Will Rise Again, Maybe, John D'Emilio

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Four years ago, CLAGS sponsored a conference on the state of gay and lesbian history. I was one of several presenters in a session on biography. None of us on the panel had consulted beforehand. But by the beginning of the third or fourth presentation, a common pattern had emerged, and the audience erupted with laughter. Each one of us had opened our remarks with a mixture of apology and denial: we each were not, we assured the audience, writing a biography!

Sexual Difference And Black Communities, Barbara Smith

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

During my fellowship year I have had the opportunity to deepen my understanding of Black lesbians and gays' historical relationship to large Black communities through interviews with a variety of informants. I have especially made progress in my research concerning Black lesbians and gays in Cleveland, Ohio (which was the focus of my CLAGS colloquium) and in my documentation of Black educational institutions as identifiable locations of lesbian and gay life.

Passing Performances: Conference Opens Closet Of American Theatre, James Wilson

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Coincidentally, CLAGS's one-day symposium "Passing Performances: History, Evidence, Identification" occurred just as Hollywood's biggest film star publicly rejected the long-standing and wide-spread claims that he is gay. In a high-profile legal battle that concluded this past fall, Tom Cruise and his wife Nicole Kidman settled their libel suit against a London tabloid, which asserted that their eight-year marriage is actually a ruse constructed to conceal Cruise's alleged homosexuality. The couple reportedly settled for more than $500,000, and they hoped to quash rumors once and for all that their marriage is a sham. Even in this "post-Ellen" era, the suit reflects …

An Activist's Guide To Lesbian History: A Companion To The Video Not Just Passing Through, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

This guide, designed to accompany the video Not Just Passing Through, contains guidelines for conducting oral history, forms for donating material to mainstream and community based archives, and lessons for engaging lesbian history with activism.

A Dissonant Declaration From The Fed-Up Humans Of America, Stuart Ewen Ph.D.

Publications and Research

In October of 1997 a Media and Democracy Congress was held in the Great Hall of The Cooper Union. Appearing under his nom de plume, Archie Bishop, the author delivered a revision of the Declaration of Independence which, for many years, was unavailable in printed form. Then, a few years back, Hideaki Hirano—a prominent Japanese sociologist—posted a written version in Japanese translation. Now, Academic Works will serve as the repository in which the original document will be made available to a reading and thinking public.

Interview: Cindi Katz. Creating Safe Space And The Materiality Of The Margins, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

Cindi Katz, associate professor and chair of the environmental psychology program at the Graduate School of the City University of New York, visited the University of Kentucky in February of 1996 to deliver the keynote address at the 5 1/2 Annual Geography Graduate Student Conference. In her address, entitled "Power, Space and Terror: Social Reproduction and the Public Environment," Professor Katz discussed how changes jn urban built environments, particularly the privatization of urban public space, negatively affected New York City children. Privatization, she argued, not only serves a 'child hating' mentality prevalent in our society, but fosters, among other things, …

One Against All: The New England Past And Present Responsibilities In The Devil And Daniel Webster, Robert Singer

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Villas On The Hudson: An Architectural And Biographical Examination, Janet Butler Munch

Publications and Research

A study of Villas on the Hudson: A Collection of Photo-Lithographs of Thirty-One Country Residences (D. Appleton & Co., 1860) depicts floor plans and views of stately homes of 19^th century country gentlemen that were located in today's upper Manhattan, the Bronx, Westchester County, Dutchess County, and even Hoboken, NJ. When published, architecture was in its infancy as a profession and we see representative works of A.J. Davis, J.C Wells, T.R. Jackson and D. Lienau, and others. The accomplishments and interests of the villa’s owners are discussed; and the current status and use of the surviving eleven villas are …

To Tell The Truth: The Lesbian Herstory Archives: Chronicling A People And Fighting Invisibility Since 1974, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

A portrait of the Lesbian Herstory Archives by a volunteer, describing the archive in its original home in Joan Nestle's Upper West Side New York City apartment that she shared with Mabel Hampton. Originally published in Out/Week Magazine.