Queer studies
Encyclopedia
Queer studies is the critical theory
based study of issues relating to sexual orientation
and gender identity
usually focusing on lesbian
, gay
, bisexual, transgender
and intersex
(LGBTI) people and cultures. Universities have also labeled this area of analysis Sexual Diversity Studies, Sexualities Studies or LGBTQ Studies (Q for "Questioning"). Once only meaning odd or unusual, and later an anti-gay
epithet
, "queer
" used in reference to LGBT communities remains controversial.
Originally centered on LGBT history
and literary theory
, the field has expanded to include the academic study of issues raised in biology
, sociology
, anthropology
, the history of science
, philosophy
, psychology
, political science
, ethics
, and other fields by an examination of the identity, lives, history, and perception of queer
people. Marianne LaFrance, the former chair of the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale University
, says, "Now we're asking not just 'What causes homosexuality?' [but also] 'What causes heterosexuality?' and 'Why is sexuality so central in some people's perspective?'"
Queer studies is not the same as queer theory
, an analytical viewpoint within queer studies (centered on literary studies and philosophy
) that challenges the putatively "socially constructed" categories of sexual identity.
offering an undergraduate major; a growing number of similar courses are offered in countries other than the United States. In 2003, the most substantial programs at City College of San Francisco
, the City University of New York
, University of California, Berkeley
, the University of Chicago
, SUNY Purchase College and New York University
. Other colleges that provide degrees in the subject include Yale University
, University of California, Los Angeles
, Sarah Lawrence College
, University of Maryland
, DePaul University
, Syracuse University
(a minor), St. Andrews University, California State University Northridge, Portland State University
,
and University of Toronto
.
Founding scholars of queer studies include Michel Foucault
, Andrew Jeffers, Judith Butler
, Lauren Berlant
, Alan Bray, David Halperin
, Audre Lorde
, John Boswell
, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
and Judith Halberstam
. Because of some of its major strands of analysis are related to public perceptions, emphasis is often placed on the integration of theory and practice, with many programs encouraging community service work, community involvement, and activist work in addition to academic reading and research.
Techniques in queer studies include the search for queer influences and themes in works of literature, the analysis of political currents linking the oppression of women, racialized groups, and disadvantaged classes with that of queer people, and the search for queer figures and trends in history that queer studies scholars view as having been ignored and excluded from the canon.
Professor Kevin Floyd has argued that the formative arguments for Marxism
and those that have been the basis for queer theory should be reformulated to examine the dissociation of sexuality from gender at the beginning of the twentieth century in terms of reification
, and to claim that this dissociation is one aspect of a larger dynamic of social "reification" enforced by capitalism
.
, women's studies
, and similar identity-based academic fields that came out of the critical theory
of the Frankfurt School
, the initial emphasis was on "uncovering the suppressed history of gay and lesbian life;" it also made its way into literature departments, where the emphasis was on literary theory. Queer theory soon developed, challenging the "socially constructed" categories of sexual identity.
The first undergraduate course in the United States on LGBTQ studies was taught at the University of California, Berkeley
in the spring of 1970. It was followed by similar courses in the fall of 1970 at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
and at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln
(UNL). The UNL course, taught by Louis Crompton, led to the introduction in the state legislature of a bill (eventually defeated) which would have banned all discussion of homosexuality in that state's universities and colleges.
According to Harvard University
, the City University of New York
began the first university program in gay and lesbian studies in 1986. The City College of San Francisco
claims to be the "First Queer Studies Department in the U.S.," with English instructor Dan Allen having developed one of the first gay literature courses in the country in Fall 1972, and the college establishing what it calls "the first Gay and Lesbian Studies Department in the United States" in 1989. Then-department chair Jonathan David Katz was the first tenured faculty in queer studies in the country.
Historians John Boswell and Martin Duberman
made Yale University
a notable center of lesbian and gay studies in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Each published several books on gay history; Boswell held three biennial conferences on the subject at the university, and Duberman sought to establish a center for lesbian and gay studies there in 1985. However, Boswell died in 1994, and in 1991 Duberman left for the City University of New York
, where he founded its influential Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies
. A 1993 alumnus gift evolved into the faculty committee-administered Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies, which developed a listing of courses relevant to lesbian and gay studies called the "Pink Book" and established a small lending library named for Boswell. The committee began to oversee a series of one-year visiting professorships in 1994.
activist Larry Kramer
offered his alma mater Yale $4 million (and his personal papers) to endow a permanent, tenured professorship in gay studies, and possibly build a gay and lesbian student center. His requirements were specific, as Yale was to use the money solely for "1) the study of and/or instruction in gay male literature..." including a tenured position, "and/or 2) the establishment of a gay student center at Yale..."
With gender, ethnic and race-related studies still relatively new, then-Yale provost Alison Richard
said that gay and lesbian studies was too narrow a specialty for a program in perpetuity, indicating a wish to compromise on some of the conditions Kramer had asserted. Negotiations broke down as Kramer, frustrated by what he perceived to be "homophobic" resistance, condemned the university in a front page story in The New York Times
. According to Kramer, he subsequently received letters from more than 100 institutions of higher learning "begging me to consider them."
In 2001, Yale accepted a $1 million grant from his older brother, money manager Arthur Kramer
, to establish the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies. The 5-year program aimed to bring in visiting faculty, host conferences and lectures, and coordinate academic endeavors in lesbian and gay studies. Jonathan David Katz assumed the role of executive coordinator in 2002; in 2003 he commented that while women's studies or African American studies have been embraced by American universities, lesbian and gay studies have not. He blamed institutionalised fear of alienating alumni of private universities, or legislators who fund public ones. The Larry Kramer Initiative ended in 2006.
In June 2009, Harvard University
announced that it will establish an endowed chair in LGBT studies. Believing the post to be "the first professorship of its kind in the country," Harvard President Drew G. Faust called it “an important milestone.” Funded by a $1.5 million gift from the members and supporters of the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus
, the F. O. Matthiessen
Visiting Professorship of Gender and Sexuality is named for a mid-20th century gay Harvard American studies scholar and literary critic who chaired the undergraduate program in history and literature. Harvard Board of Overseers member Mitchell L. Adams said, “This is an extraordinary moment in Harvard’s history and in the history of this rapidly emerging field ... And because of Harvard’s leadership in academia and the world, this gift will foster continued progress toward a more inclusive society.”
Critical theory
Critical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...
based study of issues relating to sexual orientation
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
and gender identity
Gender identity
A gender identity is the way in which an individual self-identifies with a gender category, for example, as being either a man or a woman, or in some cases being neither, which can be distinct from biological sex. Basic gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to...
usually focusing on lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
, gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
, bisexual, transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
and intersex
Intersex
Intersex, in humans and other animals, is the presence of intermediate or atypical combinations of physical features that usually distinguish female from male...
(LGBTI) people and cultures. Universities have also labeled this area of analysis Sexual Diversity Studies, Sexualities Studies or LGBTQ Studies (Q for "Questioning"). Once only meaning odd or unusual, and later an anti-gay
Heterosexism
Heterosexism is a system of attitudes, bias, and discrimination in favor of opposite-sex sexuality and relationships. It can include the presumption that everyone is heterosexual or that opposite-sex attractions and relationships are the only norm and therefore superior...
epithet
Pejorative
Pejoratives , including name slurs, are words or grammatical forms that connote negativity and express contempt or distaste. A term can be regarded as pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts...
, "queer
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
" used in reference to LGBT communities remains controversial.
Originally centered on LGBT history
LGBT history
LGBT history refers to the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender peoples and cultures around the world, dating back to the first recorded instances of same-sex love and sexuality of ancient civilizations. What survives of many centuries' persecution– resulting in shame, suppression,...
and literary theory
Literary theory
Literary theory in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for analyzing literature. However, literary scholarship since the 19th century often includes—in addition to, or even instead of literary theory in the strict sense—considerations of...
, the field has expanded to include the academic study of issues raised in biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
, sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
, anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, the history of science
History of science
The history of science is the study of the historical development of human understandings of the natural world and the domains of the social sciences....
, philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
, ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
, and other fields by an examination of the identity, lives, history, and perception of queer
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
people. Marianne LaFrance, the former chair of the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, says, "Now we're asking not just 'What causes homosexuality?' [but also] 'What causes heterosexuality?' and 'Why is sexuality so central in some people's perspective?'"
Queer theory
Queer theory is a field of critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of LGBT studies and feminist studies. Queer theory includes both queer readings of texts and the theorisation of 'queerness' itself...
, an analytical viewpoint within queer studies (centered on literary studies and philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
) that challenges the putatively "socially constructed" categories of sexual identity.
Background
Though a new discipline, a growing number of colleges have begun offering academic programs related to sex, sexuality, and sexual orientation. There are currently over 40 certificate and degree granting programs with at least five institutions in the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
offering an undergraduate major; a growing number of similar courses are offered in countries other than the United States. In 2003, the most substantial programs at City College of San Francisco
City College of San Francisco
City College of San Francisco, or CCSF, is a two-year community college in San Francisco, California. The Ocean Avenue campus, in the Ingleside neighborhood, is the college's primary location...
, the City University of New York
City University of New York
The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...
, University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, SUNY Purchase College and New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
. Other colleges that provide degrees in the subject include Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
, Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College is a private liberal arts college in the United States, and a leader in progressive education since its founding in 1926. Located just 30 minutes north of Midtown Manhattan in southern Westchester County, New York, in the city of Yonkers, this coeducational college offers...
, University of Maryland
University of Maryland, College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...
, DePaul University
DePaul University
DePaul University is a private institution of higher education and research in Chicago, Illinois. Founded by the Vincentians in 1898, the university takes its name from the 17th century French priest Saint Vincent de Paul...
, Syracuse University
Syracuse University
Syracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...
(a minor), St. Andrews University, California State University Northridge, Portland State University
Portland State University
Portland State University is a public state urban university located in downtown Portland, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1946, it has the largest overall enrollment of any university in the state of Oregon, including undergraduate and graduate students. It is also the only public university in...
,
and University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
.
Founding scholars of queer studies include Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
, Andrew Jeffers, Judith Butler
Judith Butler
Judith Butler is an American post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.Butler received her Ph.D...
, Lauren Berlant
Lauren Berlant
Lauren Berlant is the George M. Pullman Professor of English at the University of Chicago, where she has been teaching since 1984. Berlant received her Ph.D. from Cornell University...
, Alan Bray, David Halperin
David Halperin
David M. Halperin is an American theorist in the fields of gender studies, queer theory, critical theory, material culture and visual culture. He is the cofounder of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies....
, Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde was a Caribbean-American writer, poet and activist.-Life:...
, John Boswell
John Boswell (historian)
John Eastburn Boswell was a prominent historian and a professor at Yale University. Many of Boswell's studies focused on the issue of homosexuality and religion, specifically homosexuality and Christianity....
, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick was an American academic scholar in the fields of gender studies, queer theory , and critical theory. Her critical writings helped create the field of queer studies...
and Judith Halberstam
Judith Halberstam
Judith Halberstam, also Jack Halberstam, is Professor of English and Director of The Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California. Halberstam was an Associate Professor in the Department of Literature at the University of California at San Diego before working at USC...
. Because of some of its major strands of analysis are related to public perceptions, emphasis is often placed on the integration of theory and practice, with many programs encouraging community service work, community involvement, and activist work in addition to academic reading and research.
Techniques in queer studies include the search for queer influences and themes in works of literature, the analysis of political currents linking the oppression of women, racialized groups, and disadvantaged classes with that of queer people, and the search for queer figures and trends in history that queer studies scholars view as having been ignored and excluded from the canon.
Professor Kevin Floyd has argued that the formative arguments for Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
and those that have been the basis for queer theory should be reformulated to examine the dissociation of sexuality from gender at the beginning of the twentieth century in terms of reification
Reification
Reification generally refers to bringing into being or turning concrete.Specifically, reification may refer to:*Reification , making a data model for a previously abstract concept...
, and to claim that this dissociation is one aspect of a larger dynamic of social "reification" enforced by capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
.
History
Lesbian and gay studies originated in the 1970s with the publication of several "seminal works of gay history. Inspired by African American studiesAfrican American studies
African American studies is a subset of Black studies or Africana studies. It is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to the study of the history, culture, and politics of African Americans...
, women's studies
Women's studies
Women's studies, also known as feminist studies, is an interdisciplinary academic field which explores politics, society and history from an intersectional, multicultural women's perspective...
, and similar identity-based academic fields that came out of the critical theory
Critical theory
Critical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...
of the Frankfurt School
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
, the initial emphasis was on "uncovering the suppressed history of gay and lesbian life;" it also made its way into literature departments, where the emphasis was on literary theory. Queer theory soon developed, challenging the "socially constructed" categories of sexual identity.
The first undergraduate course in the United States on LGBTQ studies was taught at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
in the spring of 1970. It was followed by similar courses in the fall of 1970 at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, commonly abbreviated SIUE, is a four-year coed public university in Edwardsville, Illinois about from St. Louis, Missouri. SIUE was established in 1957 as an extension of Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and is the younger of the two largest...
and at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
The University of Nebraska–Lincoln is a public research university located in the city of Lincoln in the U.S. state of Nebraska...
(UNL). The UNL course, taught by Louis Crompton, led to the introduction in the state legislature of a bill (eventually defeated) which would have banned all discussion of homosexuality in that state's universities and colleges.
According to Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, the City University of New York
City University of New York
The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...
began the first university program in gay and lesbian studies in 1986. The City College of San Francisco
City College of San Francisco
City College of San Francisco, or CCSF, is a two-year community college in San Francisco, California. The Ocean Avenue campus, in the Ingleside neighborhood, is the college's primary location...
claims to be the "First Queer Studies Department in the U.S.," with English instructor Dan Allen having developed one of the first gay literature courses in the country in Fall 1972, and the college establishing what it calls "the first Gay and Lesbian Studies Department in the United States" in 1989. Then-department chair Jonathan David Katz was the first tenured faculty in queer studies in the country.
Historians John Boswell and Martin Duberman
Martin Duberman
Martin Bauml Duberman is an American historian, playwright, and gay-rights activist. He is Professor of History Emeritus at Lehman College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York and was the founder of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate School...
made Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
a notable center of lesbian and gay studies in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Each published several books on gay history; Boswell held three biennial conferences on the subject at the university, and Duberman sought to establish a center for lesbian and gay studies there in 1985. However, Boswell died in 1994, and in 1991 Duberman left for the City University of New York
City University of New York
The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...
, where he founded its influential Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies
Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies
The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies was founded in 1991 by professor Martin Duberman as the first university-based research center in the United States dedicated to the study of historical, cultural, and political issues of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals and communities...
. A 1993 alumnus gift evolved into the faculty committee-administered Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies, which developed a listing of courses relevant to lesbian and gay studies called the "Pink Book" and established a small lending library named for Boswell. The committee began to oversee a series of one-year visiting professorships in 1994.
Yale-Kramer controversy
In 1997, writer and AIDSAIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
activist Larry Kramer
Larry Kramer
Larry Kramer is an American playwright, author, public health advocate, and LGBT rights activist. He began his career rewriting scripts while working for Columbia Pictures, which led him to London where he worked with United Artists. There he wrote the screenplay for Women in Love in 1969, earning...
offered his alma mater Yale $4 million (and his personal papers) to endow a permanent, tenured professorship in gay studies, and possibly build a gay and lesbian student center. His requirements were specific, as Yale was to use the money solely for "1) the study of and/or instruction in gay male literature..." including a tenured position, "and/or 2) the establishment of a gay student center at Yale..."
With gender, ethnic and race-related studies still relatively new, then-Yale provost Alison Richard
Alison Richard
Dame Alison Fettes Richard, DBE, DL was the 344th Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. She was the first female Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge since the post became full-time...
said that gay and lesbian studies was too narrow a specialty for a program in perpetuity, indicating a wish to compromise on some of the conditions Kramer had asserted. Negotiations broke down as Kramer, frustrated by what he perceived to be "homophobic" resistance, condemned the university in a front page story in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. According to Kramer, he subsequently received letters from more than 100 institutions of higher learning "begging me to consider them."
In 2001, Yale accepted a $1 million grant from his older brother, money manager Arthur Kramer
Arthur Kramer
Arthur Kramer was the founding partner of influential law firm Kramer Levin. Kramer retired from the firm in 1996. He was found alone by a ski patrol in Sun Valley, Idaho on January 13, 2008 and then died from a stroke on January 26...
, to establish the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies. The 5-year program aimed to bring in visiting faculty, host conferences and lectures, and coordinate academic endeavors in lesbian and gay studies. Jonathan David Katz assumed the role of executive coordinator in 2002; in 2003 he commented that while women's studies or African American studies have been embraced by American universities, lesbian and gay studies have not. He blamed institutionalised fear of alienating alumni of private universities, or legislators who fund public ones. The Larry Kramer Initiative ended in 2006.
In June 2009, Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
announced that it will establish an endowed chair in LGBT studies. Believing the post to be "the first professorship of its kind in the country," Harvard President Drew G. Faust called it “an important milestone.” Funded by a $1.5 million gift from the members and supporters of the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus
Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus
The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus is an American non-profit organization of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Harvard University and Radcliffe College alumni/ae, faculty, staff and students...
, the F. O. Matthiessen
F. O. Matthiessen
Francis Otto Matthiessen was an educator, scholar and literary critic influential in the fields of American literature and American studies.-Scholarly work:...
Visiting Professorship of Gender and Sexuality is named for a mid-20th century gay Harvard American studies scholar and literary critic who chaired the undergraduate program in history and literature. Harvard Board of Overseers member Mitchell L. Adams said, “This is an extraordinary moment in Harvard’s history and in the history of this rapidly emerging field ... And because of Harvard’s leadership in academia and the world, this gift will foster continued progress toward a more inclusive society.”
Further reading
- Dynes, Wayne R. (ed.) Encyclopedia of Homosexuality. New York and London, Garland Publishing, 1990
- McRuer, Robert (2006). "Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability", New York University Press.
External links
- College Equality Index
- University Queer Programs
- Undergraduate Journal of Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto
- The Rockway Institute for LGBTLGBTLGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
research in the public interest at Alliant International UniversityAlliant International UniversityAlliant International University is a private, non-profit higher education institution based in San Diego, California. It offers programs in six California cities and four locations outside the United States... - The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society
- Trikster - Nordic Queer Journal
- Lesbian and Gay Research in UK Universities and Colleges(compiled in 2006)