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In Amerika They Call Us Dykes: Lesbian Lives In The 1970s, Sarah Chinn Apr 2011

In Amerika They Call Us Dykes: Lesbian Lives In The 1970s, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

This past October, CLAGS hosted a historic conference to commemorate, celebrate, and evaluate the diverse contributions of lesbians over the course of the 1970s. The conference culminated a semester-long series of events that unfurled over the Spring 2010 term. In planning for the conference, the organizing committee (made up of Melissa Gasparotto, Andrea Freud Loewenstein, Roberta Sklar, Urvashi Vaid, and myself) imagined this conference as embracing as broad a field of lesbian lives as it could.


Visiting Clags As A Scholar In Residence, Tuula Juvonen Apr 2011

Visiting Clags As A Scholar In Residence, Tuula Juvonen

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

A year ago I was most excited to receive a letter of invitation from CLAGS' executive director Sarah Chinn to spend the autumn term 2010 as a Scholar in Residence. The idea of returning to CLAGS after 16 years of absence was particularly intriguing for me because I found my last visit there in 1994 most valuable and inspiring for my scholarly work. And I was not to be disappointed this time either.


Director's Letter, Sarah Chinn Oct 2010

Director's Letter, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Dear Friends: CLAGS's mission to nurture LGBT scholarship means that we're often looking into the past and into the future at the same time, remembering the queer past as we encourage cutting-edge scholarship. This feels especially true right now, since we're preparing for our 20th anniversary and putting the finishing touches on our historic (in all senses of the word) conference, "In Amerika They Call Us Dykes: Lesbian Lives in the 1970s."


Black Lesbians In The 70s, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz Oct 2010

Black Lesbians In The 70s, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

During the initial planning session for In Amerika They Call Us Dykes: Lesbian Lives in the 70s Spring Series, there was lack of clarity about the activity of Black Lesbians in the early part of the 1970s. The aim for Black Lesbian Herstory in the 70s: An At Home Tour and Guide to the Black Lesbian Herstory of the Collection was to present information to the lesbian community and increase Black Lesbian invisibility.


Lesbians In The 1970s, Sarah Chinn Oct 2010

Lesbians In The 1970s, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The 1970s was a period of intense excitement, change, activism, and activity for lesbians. As lesbian feminism redefined what qualified as a "political issue" and challenged every assumption about gender, race, class, ability, sexuality, and any number of other social categories, lesbians of all kinds created cultural, social, political, economic, and regional organizations and networks.


Allan Bérubé: A Visionary Historian, John D'Emilio Apr 2008

Allan Bérubé: A Visionary Historian, John D'Emilio

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

I first met Allan in the spring of 1979. In the two preceding years, in the time he carved out from the odd jobs that kept him afloat, he had systematically pursued leads from Jonathan Ned Katz's Gay American History, in the process amassing his own trove of queer historical documents. One thick line of research especially delighted him. To his surprise, 19th-century San Francisco newspapers ran extended stories, amounting at times to almost mini-biographies, of "women who passed as men."


Director's Letter, Sarah Chinn Apr 2008

Director's Letter, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

It was hard not to be inspired, moved, and thrilled by Douglas Crimp's remarkable Kessler Lecture on November 2nd. Combining personal history, art criticism, political analysis, and trenchant commentary on the intersections between them, Douglas gave us a guided tour of the long-abandoned, much-used piers of lower Manhattan.


Lessons In Sex And Fascism: Dagmar Herzog's Pedagogy Workshop, Megan Jenkins Jan 2007

Lessons In Sex And Fascism: Dagmar Herzog's Pedagogy Workshop, Megan Jenkins

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

On December 4, 2006 Dagmar Herzog, Professor of History at the CUNY Graduate Center, led a lively workshop titled "What's So Sexy about Fascism? And Why is it Important to Think About it in the Classroom?" as part of the CLAGS/CSGS LGBTQ Plans Pedagogy Workshop.


Revisiting Queer Latinidad: A Clags Seminar Course Review, Anel Méndez Velázquez, Ileana Jiménez Oct 2006

Revisiting Queer Latinidad: A Clags Seminar Course Review, Anel Méndez Velázquez, Ileana Jiménez

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Anel: The construction of a latinà-queer "we" is very problematic. The construction of a "queer we" and a "latinà we" separately—and any attempt to add them up in a "queer-latinà we"—privileges and universalizes particular imagined identities at the expense and exclusion of specific cultural and personal practices and ways of being.


Looking At Lesbian Feminism 1970-2005: Conversations Across Generations, Polly Thistlethwaite Apr 2006

Looking At Lesbian Feminism 1970-2005: Conversations Across Generations, Polly Thistlethwaite

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

What has become of lesbian feminism? Over 100 activists, scholars, and writers convened at the CUNY Graduate Center on Friday, October 28, for intergenerational discussions about lesbian-feminism. Activists from the first 'organized' lesbian movement paired with lesbian activists who came out post-lesbian-feminism to talk about lesbian-feminism and the body, culture, sex, and movement building. Together with a moderator, participants in the four featured discussions shared convictions and experiences about class, race, transgender politics, misogyny, privilege, dating strategies, sexual styles, and liberation struggles.


Documenting Queer Community Histories: Whose History Is It?, Jessica Stern, Nicholas Ray Oct 2005

Documenting Queer Community Histories: Whose History Is It?, Jessica Stern, Nicholas Ray

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

What does it mean to be a member of a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ) community? When did LGBTQ community history begin? Where do queer communities differ? How do we broach these questions to document communities' experiences? And significantly, why is it important to document the histories of those who are defined as LGBTQ?


Undercover Girl- The Fbi's Lesbian: A Note On Resources, Lisa E. Davis Jul 2003

Undercover Girl- The Fbi's Lesbian: A Note On Resources, Lisa E. Davis

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Historical investigation is never easy, but deciphering gay and lesbian history often turns out to be more than usually convoluted. The players lead at least two lives—public and private — and secrets abound. Clues appear in unconventional sources, beyond the library and beyond theory. If you are lucky, the search develops its own momentum. This is how the story of undercover girl Angela Calomiris (1915-95), "Angie" to her friends, whose life was touched by extraordinary events, revealed itself to me.


The Ten Days That Shook San Francisco: History And Myth, Paul Vandecarr Jul 2003

The Ten Days That Shook San Francisco: History And Myth, Paul Vandecarr

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

November 1978: a popular religious and civic leader from San Francisco named Jim Jones leads over 900 people—mostly African-Americans and many from San Francisco—to murder and suicide in a remote jungle community of Guyana called "Jonestown." Though far from San Francisco, the catastrophe strikes at the heart of the city's public life. Only nine days later, on November 27, ex-police officer and city Supervisor Dan White enters San Francisco City Hall and assassinates Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. These two events—which devastated San Francisco's African-American and gay communities—formed a defining moment in the city's turbulent and ongoing attempt …


"Fifty Years After" Symposium Explores The Legacy Of Christine Jorgensen, Omar Portillo Jan 2003

"Fifty Years After" Symposium Explores The Legacy Of Christine Jorgensen, Omar Portillo

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

There is a rich history of people who have deliberately constructed their bodies and challenged the binary sex-gender system. On November 22, CLAGS presented a symposium in which scholars, trans. activists, service providers, and artists revisited the life of one of the most famous of them — Christine Jorgensen — and considered her impact on our understanding of gender identities five decades after her "sex change" made headlines. Guest speakers - among them C. Jacob Hale, Hugh McGowan, Joanne Meyerowitz, Mariette Pathy-Allen, Ben Singer, Dean Spade, Chris Straayer, Susan Stryker, and Dinh Tu Tran — traced Jorgensen's life and the …


"More Love And More Desire": A History Of The Brazil Lesbian, Gay, And Transgendered Movement, James N. Green Jul 2002

"More Love And More Desire": A History Of The Brazil Lesbian, Gay, And Transgendered Movement, James N. Green

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

For many LGBT activists, the 1969 Stonewall rebellion marked the beginning of a modern international liberation movement. Diffusing outward from New York, so the prevalent notion goes, homosexuals began to organize political movements to demand equal rights, inspired by the militancy of U.S. queers. According to this widely held idea, the emergence of gay and lesbian groups was slower in "Third World countries" because of authoritarian regimes, patriarchal social structures, and backward societies.


Violence, Mourning, Politics, Judith Butler Jan 2002

Violence, Mourning, Politics, Judith Butler

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

I’d like to speak to you this evening on the matter of politics and, specifically, how the struggles of gender and sexual minorities might offer a perspective on current issues that are before us, questions of mourning and violence, which we have to deal with as part of an international community. I'd like to start, and to end, with the question of the human, of who counts as the human, and the related question of whose lives count as lives, and with a question that has preoccupied many of us for years: what makes for a grievable life. I believe …


Expanding Horizons, Alisa Solomon Jan 2002

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.


Insisting On Inquiry, Alisa Solomon Oct 2001

Insisting On Inquiry, Alisa Solomon

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

This special CLAGS newsletter goes to press exactly one month after hijackers rammed jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and aimed for a third target before being brought down in the fields of Pennsylvania. In the days immediately following the attacks, pundits, politicians and plain folks asserted that our lives in America had been changed forever. Certainly all of us at CLAGS have been stunned and shaken. Gathering for our first board meeting of the year just days later, we expressed our grief, confusion, anxieties, and fears. Like everyone, no doubt, we questioned the meaning and purpose …


Why Do They Strike Us?, James Polchin Jan 2001

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 …


"Who Is Sleeping In The Bed Of Sodom?", Nancy Levene Jul 2000

"Who Is Sleeping In The Bed Of Sodom?", Nancy Levene

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The question that I am left with from the extraordinary presentations over the conference's two days borrows from Rabbi Steve Greenberg's and Ludger Viefhues's discussion of the multiple images of the biblical "Sodom". Conventionally Sodom has signified a place of sexual deviance or, conversely, sexual censorship. But as Greenberg pointed out, in many traditional commentaries on the story of the condemnation of Sodom, the issue was not that the townspeople were engaged in forbidden sexual practices, but that they were violent and hostile to those in need of shelter and food.


Excerpt From Wrestling With Rustin, Or The Left Will Rise Again, Maybe, John D'Emilio Jan 2000

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 Jul 1999

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.