Mapping the Gay Guides (MGG) relies on the Damron Guides, an early but longstanding travel guide aimed at gay men since the early 1960s. An LGBTQ equivalent to the African American “green books,” the Damron Guides contained lists of bars, bathhouses, cinemas, businesses, hotels, and cruising sites in every U.S. state, where gay men could find friends, companions, and sex. [Read more…] about Historical Travel: Mapping the Gay Guides
Gender History
The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison
The Women’s House of Detention, a landmark that ushered in the modern era of women’s imprisonment, is now largely forgotten. But when it stood in New York City’s Greenwich Village, from 1929 to 1974, it was a nexus for the tens of thousands of women, transgender men, and gender-nonconforming people who inhabited its crowded cells.
Some of these inmates — Angela Davis, Andrea Dworkin, Afeni Shakur — were famous, but the vast majority were incarcerated for the crimes of being poor and improperly feminine. Today, approximately 40 percent of the people in women’s prisons identify as queer; in earlier decades, that percentage was almost certainly higher. [Read more…] about The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison
A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement
In the new book Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement (NYU Press, 2022) Wendy L. Rouse of San Jose State University reveals that the suffrage movement included individuals who represented a range of genders and sexualities. However, owing to the constant pressure to present a “respectable” public image, suffrage leaders publicly conformed to gendered views of ideal womanhood in order to make women’s suffrage more palatable to the public. [Read more…] about A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement
Black History in Upstate New York Series Concluding
The final programs of the Black History in Upstate New York series created by Colgate University graduate and Upstate Institute Fellow Victoria Basulto will be posted online from August 23rd through 26th.
These short online programs highlight individuals, events, and places in Upstate New York central to movements like abolitionism, civil rights, and women’s suffrage movement. [Read more…] about Black History in Upstate New York Series Concluding
Slavery & Freedom in French Louisiana
The story of freedom in colonial New Orleans and Louisiana pivoted on the choices black women made to retain control of their bodies, families, and futures.
How did black women in colonial Louisiana navigate French and Spanish black and slavery codes to retain control of their bodies, families, and futures? [Read more…] about Slavery & Freedom in French Louisiana
Adirondack Gentrification: Depletion (The Devil’s Due, Part 3)
In the autumn of 2015, the Adirondack Research Consortium in partnership with the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government held a panel to discuss the diminishing demography of the Adirondacks. The all-male affair it convened to lead this conversation was typically partisan, casually excluding the perspectives, positions and participation of those primarily burdened with the labor of Adirondack propagation.
While this august assembly of middle-aged men sat pondering the problem with pie charts and furrowed brows, back home in the mountains, the keystone species of the demographic ecosystem – Adirondack mothers – got on with the business of raising children in a climate that is notably inimical to their interests even within the auspices of nation that is generally hostile to the working conditions of those who shoulder the bulk of the responsibility for social reproduction. [Read more…] about Adirondack Gentrification: Depletion (The Devil’s Due, Part 3)
Parish Lifeblood: Italian-Americans In Williamsburg (Podcast)
In the latest episode of Empire State Engagements Dr. Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada talks about her ethnographic study of Italian-American men’s Catholic devotion, Lifeblood of the Parish; Men and Catholic Devotion in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (NYU Press, 2020). She discussed her experiences over six years of work engaging the parish community; reading tattoos as devotional texts; playfulness and devotion in masculine spaces; the rich history of Italian-American Catholicism in Williamsburg; and the endurance of this parish, tradition, and community – despite decades of challenges ranging from reactionary clergymen to Robert Moses to gentrifying hipsters. [Read more…] about Parish Lifeblood: Italian-Americans In Williamsburg (Podcast)
Science Knows No Gender: Eunice Newton Foote And Climate Change
The presentation Science Knows No Gender: Eunice Newton Foote and the Cause of Global Warming, by University of California Santa Barbara Visiting Scholar John Perlin, has been made available online.
Eunice Newton Foote, born July 17th, 1819, was an American scientist (including biology, especially botany), an inventor, and a women’s rights campaigner from Seneca Falls, New York. She died on September 30th, 1888. [Read more…] about Science Knows No Gender: Eunice Newton Foote And Climate Change
Transgender Day of Remembrance Event Set For Friday
Transgender Day of Remembrance is November 20th. It’s a day to memorialize those who have been killed or murdered as the result of transphobia, (hatred or fear of transgender and gender non-conforming/non-binary people) and those who died as a result of suicide.
This day serves to bring attention to the continued violence and non-acceptance endured by the transgender community which we see at an alarming new rate emanating from federal government against its own people. [Read more…] about Transgender Day of Remembrance Event Set For Friday
LGBTQ Pride Month Is History In Action
LGBTQI+ Pride Month is normally associated with colorful parades and marches and speeches by local, regional, and national leaders, but it’s part of an important political history as well.
Out of all the months in the year, why June? [Read more…] about LGBTQ Pride Month Is History In Action