Gender and Sexuality Commons^™

Colloquium Series Focuses On Emerging Scholars, Elizabeth Freeman

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

This year's colloquium series has focused on emerging scholars, those doing work in race and sexuality, and those working in public policy, activism, and/or the social sciences.

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 Note From The Development Director, Stephanie Grant

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

During the past two years, CLAGS has been educating itself about organizational development and fundraising. Grants from the New York City Lesbian and Gay Funding Collaborative and the Rockefeller Foundation have enabled board members and staff to attend workshops and conferences designed to expand our knowledge about non-profit management and to increase our fundraising and organizational skills.

Ackerman Lecture, Suzanne Iasenza

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The First Annual Dr. John Patten Memorial Lecture was held November 14 at the Hunter College of Social Work. CLAGS agreed to cosponsor the lecture, developed to honor the life and work of Dr. John Patten, faculty member of the Ackerman Institute for Family Therapy, Medical Director of the Institute's AIDS Project, and co-founder and co-director f the Institute's Gay and Lesbian Family Study Project. Dr. Patten was also co-founder and senior editor of In The Family Magazine, a family therapy-oriented magazine for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and their relations. He died of AIDS on October 4, 1995.

A Letter From The Executive Director, Jill Dolan

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Working with CLAGS this last year at our quarterly Board meetings, at our monthly committee meetings, and with the daily operations of our office, I'm continually impressed by the sophistication of our programs, the depth of our discussions, and the passion of our arguments about gay and lesbian and queer studies and its relationship to our diverse communities. After a productive year of four conferences and our monthly colloquia, amplified by co-sponsored events that sometimes didn't even make it onto our annual calendar, I'm proud of the richness of the work we've sponsored and presented.

Colloquium Addresses Queer Pedagogy, Harriet Malinowitz

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

On Saturday, March 8, CLACS held a one-day event called Queer Pedagogy: A Colloquium on Sexuality and Curriculum. The colloquium addressed questions about the purposes, methods, language, applications, contexts, affiliations, and performance of queer studies in academic classrooms.

A Note From The Board Chair, Framji Minwalla

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

This has been a difficult, yet especially productive year for CLAGS. As most of you know, Jill Dolan stepped into Marty Duberman's shoes, becoming our first new Executive Director since the founding of the organization seven years ago. And while we all miss Marty, Jill has accomplished a daunting task brilliantly.

Graduate Students Explore Forms Of Desire, Jay Plum

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Last April, QUNY (the association for queer students at the CUNY Graduate Center) and CLAGS co-sponsored Forms of Desire: The Seventh Annual Queer Graduate Studies Conference, showcasing the research of more than 100 graduate students from across the country and around the world. With panels on such topics as "Sexuality and the State," "Pre-Modern Sexualities," "Lesbian Erotics," "Reading Bisexualities," "Queer Ethnographies," "AIDS and Its Narratives," "Queer(ing) Masculinities," and "Homo Hollywood," the conference approached the growing field of lesbian/gay/queer studies from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives.

Michael C.P. Ryan Bequest, James Wilson

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

CLAGS has received a generous bequest from the from the estate of Michael C.P. Ryan. The executor of Mr. Ryan's estate, Ana-Mita Betancourt, announced that the $60,000 bequest will fund the Michael C.P. Ryan Latino/Latina Colloquium Series, a five-year program exploring political, cultural, and artistic questions facing lesbian and gay Latino/as in the United States and Latin America. The bequest follows an earlier gift from the Ryan estate that helped fund the historic conference. Crossing National and Sexual Borders: Queer Sexualities in Latin/o America, in October 1996.

"The Teacher Would Call Me 'Piggy', 'Smelley', 'Dirty', Names Like That": Prying Open A Discussion Of Domestic Violence For Educators, Lois M. Weis, Michelle Fine

Publications and Research

(The Teacher) would call me "piggy", "smelly", "dirty", names like that, and the kids started following along with it. And I'd say, by the fourth grade, I started cleaning myself out. I didn't care anymore, but my father had this thing that you were allowed to take a bath once a week. He would measure the shampoo, he would measure the soap, and if he thought somebody was using the shampoo when he said you shouldn't, you'd get a beating. But I got sick of it, and the beatings almost became to be painless when hit with a belt or …

A Message From The New Executive Director, Jill Dolan

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

I'm honored and pleased to be succeeding Marty Duberman as Executive Director of CLAGS. I taught in theatre and drama and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before I accepted my present position in the PhD Program in Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center. At Madison, teaching and writing in lesbian performance theory, the fact that a national center for lesbian and gay studies had been established in New York gave me a sense that the field in which I worked was arriving, securing its legitimacy and its vibrancy and insisting on its visibility. In my two years at …

Black Nations/Queer Nations Conference, Cathy Cohen

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Black lesbian and gay men have made significant accomplishments but continue to confront a number of urgent challenges, such as AIDS, unemployment, racism, and homophobia. Our future survival turns on our ability to break new ground toward overcoming these challenges. It is therefore necessary for us to dialogue, debate, and develop new strategies of resistance and community education that will advance the politics of lesbian and gay people of African descent, our communities, and society as a whole. To this end, we will sponsor an unprecedented three-day conference.

Asses And Wits: The Homoerotics Of Mastery In Satiric Comedy, Mario Digangi

Publications and Research

This essay explores master-servant homoeroticism in three seventeenth-century satiric comedies: Ben Jonson's Epicoene and Volpone and George Chapman's The Gentleman Usher. Whereas "sodomy" always signifies social disorder, "homoerotic" useful for describing same-sex relations that are socially normative or orderly. Thus homoerotic master-servant relations become "sodomitical" only when they are perceived to threaten social order. In Epicoene, the character associated with the disorder of "sodomy" is neither Dauphine or Epicoene, but the "unnatural" Morose, even though he has not literally had sex with the boy he marries. The erotic master-servant relationship in Volpone is sodomitical because it transgresses against …

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgender, Polly Thistlethwaite, Daniel C. Tsang

Publications and Research

The proliferation of publications in the lesbian, Gay, bisexual, and transgender press has allowed the weaving of a well-informed network of previously isolated individuals and communities, empowering and unifying lesbian, gay, and other sexual minorities," Dan Tsang and Polly Thistlethwaite wrote in the introduction to the 'Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender' section of Katzes' 1995 edition of Magazines for Libraries. This title review of the queer periodicals of the day was intended to serve as a guide and justification for 'mainstream' libraries' collection building. The number and range of titles in Thistlethwaite and Tsang's collaborative entries (1989, 1992, and …

The Lesbian And Gay Past: An Interpretive Battleground, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

The lesbian and gay past is an interpretive battleground that mainstream archives have refused to enter, assuming few risks in collecting, naming, or identifying archival collections. At the same time, libraries offer up worlds to those who work to unearth the secrets there.

The New York Public Library's 1994 "Becoming Visible" exhibit trumpeted The Arrival of lesbian and gay history to New York's cultural mainstream. The NYPL exhibit denies the library's role in secreting lesbian and gay history, and diminished the contributions of community-based archives to the exhibit.

Becoming Gentlemen: Women's Experiences At One Ivy League Law School, Lani Guinier, Michelle Fine, Jane Balin, Ann Bartow, Deborah Lee Stachel

Publications and Research

In this Article we describe preliminary research by and about women law students at the University of Pennsylvania Law School—a typical, if elite, law school stratified deeply along gender lines. Our database draws from students enrolled at the Law School between 1987 and 1992, and includes academic performance data from 981 students, self-reported survey data from 366 students, written narratives from 104 students, and group-level interview data of approximately eighty female and male students.' From these data we conclude that the law school experience of women in the aggregate differs markedly from that of their male peers.

Gays And Lesbians In Library History, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

Summarizes gay and lesbian activism in librarianship and the role of libraries in supporting gay and lesbian movements.

Report From The Chair, Esther Katz

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The year 1992 proved to be an extraordinarily successful one for CLAGS. We mounted a series of exciting panels, conferences, and special events, and launched an ambitious program of grants and fellowships for scholars and students. A good portion of the credit for the success of these activities goes to CLAGS's hardworking Board of Directors which undertakes the myriad tasks required to plan and implement our various programs.

Report From The Cochairs, Esther Katz, Cheryl Clarke

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

It has been a busy but exceedingly productive year for this CLAGS Board. Along with the creative series of public conferences, panels, and monthly colloquia mounted by the Program Committee, we have taken on the new challenges of a Fellowship Program generously funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as cosponsorship of the Stonewall History Project. Indeed, as CLAGS continues to develop and expand, we are working overtime to keep up with our success.

Lesbian And Gay, Polly Thistlethwaite, Daniel C. Tsang

Publications and Research

"The lesbian and gay press has shaped and reflected the rise of gay and lesbian liberation," Dan Tsang and Polly Thistlethwaite wrote in the introduction to the 'Lesbian and Gay' section of Katzes' 1992 edition of Magazines for Libraries. This title review of the queer periodicals of the day was intended to serve as a guide and justification for 'mainstream' libraries' collection building. The number and range of titles in Thistlethwaite and Tsang's collaborative entries (1989, 1992, and 1995) far exceeded any mainstream library collection known to either of the authors who were nevertheless hopeful that libraries would expand …

The Lesbian Herstory Archives, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

An introduction to the history and radical practice of New York City's Lesbian Herstory Archives with discussion of the period-specific situation of the archive housed in, but outgrowing, private quarters.

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.

Lesbian And Gay, Polly Thistlethwaite, Daniel C. Tsang

Publications and Research

"The time is past when librarians can assume no patron is lesbian or gay, or that there is no interest in gay research," Dan Tsang and Polly Thistlethwaite wrote in the introduction to the 'Lesbian and Gay' section of Katzes' 1989 edition of Magazines for Libraries. This title review of the queer periodicals of the day was intended to serve as a guide and justification for 'mainstream' libraries' collection building. The number and range of titles in Thistlethwaite and Tsang's collaborative entries (1989, 1992, and 1995) far exceeded any mainstream library collection known to either of the authors who …

Disabled Women: Sexism Without The Pedestal, Michelle Fine, Adrienne Asch

Publications and Research

The position of the disabled woman in current U.S. society deserves political, theoretical and empirical attention. In this paper we have delineated the economic, social and psychological constraints which place her at a distinct disadvantage, relative to disabled men and nondisabled women. We evaluate the ways in which having a disability is viewed as an impediment to traditional or nontraditional sex role development. The construct rolelessness is introduced, defined and examined. We conclude with reconmiendations for needed research and policy.