UNTING

LE HISTORY OF CLAGS

CLAGS is pleased to celebrate our 10th anniversary with this special retrospective section. We have ransacked our archives to offer some

photos and narratives that capture some of the highlights of the last 10 years. Of course there’s hardly room to name all the legions of people

who have lent their ideas, labor, and passions to CLAGS’s panels, colloquia, and other events, but we hope that the fraction mentioned here

will evoke the many more who have shared our podiums, and we acknowledge and thank them all. CLAGS’s programs are produced

through the intellectual and manual toil of our volunteer board of directors and grad-student staff, whom we salute with gratitude and

affection. And to all of you, who have joined our efforts in many ways, we extend great thanks and a warm invitation to the next 10 years.

Hitting the Ground Running

homophobic throngs as he marched with the

Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization at the St.
Patrick’s Day parade. Soon heated debates
would flare up over proposals to install the

lesbian and gay-inclusive Rainbow Curriculum

in the NYC public schools. On the national

scene, Senator Jesse Helms and company

were still fulminating away over the
“obscenity” supported by the National
Endowment for the Arts, whose funding they

had already cut considerably, and Patrick

Buchanan was launching a presidential

primary campaign in which he was calling the

In April 1991, when CLAGS became formally established at the CUNY Graduate
Center, George Bush pére was in the White House, Queer Nation was marking its first

birthday, and Mayor David Dinkins had just endured the jeers and heaved bottles of

The future of LGTBQ Studies lies in the
influence our ideas generate outside of
strictly academic discourse, in the
contributions we make to activism
across a spectrum of global issues, and
in how the strength of our words, our
writing, and our teaching can promote
changes in both social consciousness
and social practices. Our future lies in
the depth of the collaborations we
form with other interdisciplines, and
with how we model activist scholarship
for our students, our colleagues, and
our communities.

JILL DOLAN

AIDS virus “divine retribution” on an “immoral lifestyle” of a “pederast proletariat.”

Karen Thompson had finally won the right to care for her lover, Sharon Kowalski, who had been disabled in a

1983 accident, and in San Francisco, queer activists were taking to the streets to protest the filming of “Basic


Kessler Awardees

The, annual David R.
Kessler Lecture in
Lesbian and Gay
Studies, which "honors
an individual who has
made an outstanding
contribution to the
expression and
understanding of lesbian
and gay life," is pleased
to have recognized:

1992-93

| Lift My Face To The
Hill: The Life Of Mabel
Hampton As Told By A
White Woman

JOAN NESTLE

1993-94

The Personal is Political:
Queer Fiction and
Criticism

EDMUND WHITE

1994-95

African American
Lesbian and Gay
History: An Exploration
BARBARA SMITH

1995-96

Reading of Texts
MONIQUE
WITTIG

1996-97

My Butch Career:

A Memoir

ESTHER NEWTON

1997-98

...3,2,1 Contact
SAMUEL RN.
DELANY

1998-99

A Dialogue on Love
EVE KOSOFSKY
SEDGWICK

1999-2000

Wrestling with Rustin, or
The Left Will Rise Again,
Maybe

JOHN D’EMILIO

2000-01

A Tuna Bleeding in the
Heat: A Chicana Codex
of Changing
Consciousness
CHERRIE
MORAGA

Instinct” for its reliance on the old homicidal-lesbian trope. Down the coast in Los Angeles, LGTBQ
groups were joining broad-based civil rights coalitions in outraged demonstrations decrying the police
beating of Rodney King.

LGTBQ Studies was blooming as a vibrant field of scholarly inquiry: By the early ‘90s, a critical mass
of books by pioneering authors both inside and outside the academy had accumulated, a sprinkling of
courses could be found from New Haven to Berkeley, and the City College of San Francisco had
instituted an undergraduate major. And five years had already passed since Martin Duberman had
gathered a group of colleagues in his living room to discuss the possibility of creating a lesbian and gay
research center to lend the field some of the perks of and powers of institutionalization. It took those five
years for Duberman and a dedicated committee to raise the $50,000 CUNY required for initiating a new
center, and once established in ‘91, CLAGS immediately set about fostering and disseminating LGTBQ
scholarship in as many ways as it could. A volunteer board of directors made up of scholars, teachers,
public intellectuals, community activists, and professionals, started planning a range of programs that
could support the long labor of research, quickly offer analysis of hot issues that erupted in the national
media, and assemble LGTBQ thinkers of all stripes to discuss, debate, dispute, deconstruct, and dream
together.

"Lesbian Literature" panel Barbara Smith, Bertha Harris, fill Johnston, Lisa Kennedy and Maria Irene Fornes.

One prime, early example was a symposium on the “Gay Brain,” where Simon LeVay presented
his findings on the hypothalamus -- and such skeptics as Carole Vance and William Byne offered sharp
critiques. Meanwhile, the monthly colloquium series was launched, providing opportunities for
seasoned researchers and brand new graduate students alike to present work-in-progress for feedback
from a growing community of LGBTQ scholars. In its first full academic year, CLAGS presented panels
on Homosexuality and Hollywood and on the increasingly disputed Rainbow Curriculum, a colloquium
on Blanche Wiesen Cook’s latest findings on Eleanor Roosevelt, and a well-attended conference called

“Crossing Identifications:

Contemporary Theories of I left the founding committee of CLAGS shortly after the Center was officially

approved, so my memories are more from the "conception" phase than its
"post-partum" realization. My files from that four-year struggle yielded up the
mission statement we wrote for submission to the Graduate Center adminis-
tration about 1990, which might inspire some revealing reflection on

our founding principles and goals. No doubt each veteran would have a
different reminiscence of the degree to which CLAGS -- and by extension the
wider community, now called "LGTBQ," which it hopes to both analyze and
shape -- has fulfilled that original vision, compromised it, or simply left parts
undone by dint of the limited resources so often available to progressive
causes. But on balance, to me, the prophecy did come true:"Article 3: The
purpose of the Center will be to conduct and encourage scholarly study of the
lesbian and gay experience from a multi-cultural and multi-racial perspective,
informed by feminist methods and values. The Center will arrange scholarly
meetings, develop seminars and colloquia, foster research projects, and
provide for public lectures. It is anticipated that faculty and students, scholars
from other universities, and persons who by their experience, reputation, and
scholarship have achieved distinction in the field of lesbian and gay studies
will also be invited to participate."

Personal Identity,” where
such speakers as Judith
Butler, Wahneema Lubiano,
Biddy Martin, Michael
Moon, Yukiko Hanawa,

Kendall Thomas, and
Patricia Williams debated
the contentious questions of
queer theory. And CLAGS
set out right away to raise
funds specifically to support
research in LGTBQ studies,

JAMES M. SASLOW



Allen Ginsburg and Alice Walker at
CLAGS's Nov. 1991 inaugural fundraising

celebration.

in dissertation and fellowship prizes for worthy projects, whether by graduate
students, unaffiliated scholars, or senior professors.

With such a propitious beginning, CLAGS began to win the confidence and
backing of generous supporters. Dr. David R. Kessler endowed an annual
lectureship to “honor an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to
the expression and understanding of lesbian and gay life” and in December 1992,
Joan Nestle, co-founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, gave the inaugural
Kessler lecture to a standing-room crowd. That same year, the Rockefeller
Foundation’s Humanities Fellowship Program granted CLAGS $250,000 — the
largest foundation grant ever given to a non-AIDS lesbian and gay organization —
to host two scholars in residence each year for three years. And at the Grad
Center, CLAGS had scored an office and a part-time grad-student staffer.

Expanding CLAGS Programs

With the election of Bill Clinton, who readily recognized lesbian and gay
rights at least in principle (LGTBQ rights groups were quick to point to his early
naming of Roberta Achtenberg as an assistant director of HUD), issues of queer
civil rights were in the spotlight again — and Clinton’s rapid retreat from his
promise to lift the ban on gays serving openly in the military, kept them there,
and by many accounts, also skewed the priorities of the movement. CLAGS
continued to create opportunities for academics and wider publics to look
beneath and beyond the definition of queer concerns offered by “Nightline”
and the New York Times. Among other highlights that season, CLAGS presented
an Evening of Lesbian Literature and another of Gay Men’s Literature, both co-
sponsored with PEN, bringing into conversation authors Dorothy Allison, Nicole
Breedlove, Blanche McCrary Boyd, Maria Irene Fornes, Bertha Harris, Jill
Johnston, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, and Barbara Smith on one hand, and
Christopher Bram, Dennis Cooper, Michael Cunningham, Samuel Delany,
Sanford Friedman, Allen Ginsberg, Dale Peck, Assotto Saint, and Edmund White,
on the other. The year was topped off by a celebratory CLAGS benefit, emceed
by the brilliantly hilarious Danitra Vance, which helped keep CLAGS going
strong in 1993-94.

That next year featured a two-day conference called “At the Frontier,”
which explored the effect: of lesbian and gay scholarship on the content and
theory of the social sciences, with papers on subjects ranging from ancient
Crete to the Native North American berdache, the Indian hijra, and the
construction of constitutional rights for lesbians and gay men in the contem-
porary US. That work was extended into practical arenas when, soon after,
working with GMHC and the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center,

FROM THE GROUND UF

A Conversation with
Martin Duberman

Martin Duberman founded CLAGS and served as its
executive director until 1996. We asked him to reflect
on the early days of the organization and on what
CLAGS has achieved.

CCS fade Mee De

What was your motivation for starting :

It was early 1986 and | thought

_ enough scholarship had accumulated that it _

was important to institutionalize it, notin a —
bad sense, but in the sense of getting the _
kinds of perks and encouragement and

_ Support and legitimacy that a university

setting would provide. A crystallizing factor
was an accidental personal one: | was close
friends with a woman who was married to _

Benno Schmidt at the time and he had just _
_ been appointed president of Yale. Benno was

on some matters liberal — though no one’s ©
idea of a radical, as he has since amply ~
demonstrated. | thought he might be
sympathetic. | had been an undergraduate at

CONTINUED ON PAGE 5


ODF

My primary memory of
CLAGS are the last two
years of my tenure as
Board chair - years in
which the Board was in a
highly charged state, rent
by anger and conflict over
race, gender and power.
But what lingers most in
my thoughts is the precise,
incisive and articulate way
in which everyone argued
their positions. There was
anger, passion, frustration,
but there were few knee-
jerk responses -- instead
there was carefully
reasoned thought. |
learned more in those
meetings about the
intersections and conflicts
of race, class and gender;
about the process of
organizational reform;
about how much we share
-and do not share -- than
from any theoretical study
I have read. In the end,
there was no comfortable
agreement to disagree
(hardly a useful resolution
of anything). But almost
no one simply walked out
of a meeting in the middle
of an argument, or simply
quit. I believe CLAGS
survived those years
because enough of its
members believed and
understood that it could
and should be a vehicle
through which these issues
could be revisited, re-
interrogated, and wrestled
with -- not just on panels
and conferences, but in
the very way we
functioned.

ES THER KAT Z

CLAGS co-sponsored a panel
discussion on “Identifying Health and Substance Abuse
‘ Needs in the Lesbian and Gay Community.” And the concentration on social
sciences expanded in May, as CLAGS produced the first-ever conference on the economy of
LGTBQ communities, Homo/Economics. Kicked off by a welcome from New York State Assembly )
member Deborah Glick, the day included panels on the role of economic factors, such as the sexual
division of labor and capitalist markets in the development of sexual identities; the development of the
gay and lesbian market and its implications for the movement; and how the economic welfare of

lesbians and gay men have been affected by the development of a gay market.

Building a Membership

In 1994-95, CLAGS tended to its own economics by becoming a membership organization.
Remaining committed to presenting conferences, symposia, and colloquia free of charge (or multi-day
conferences with low registration fees), CLAGS needed at least to recoup its $12,000 in newsletter
mailing costs to a list that had grown to more than 7,500 and, as events became more national in
scope, needed to increase the budgets for participants’ travel and lodging. A few generous
foundations and many more individual donors had
continued to support CLAGS, but the time had

come to ask those with a stake in our work to help

sustain it. The response was tremendous: more
than 1000 people joined up at once, and the
roster has kept on growing ever since.

That vote of confidence, along with the

excitement being generated by the upcoming

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Nations/Queer Nations?


Toshi Reagon and Brian
Freeman at Black
Nations/Queer Nations?

conference, a truly groundbreaking event that addressed such urgent challenges as
AIDS, unemployment, racism, and homophobia in communities of LGTBQ people
of African descent. Presenters included Jacqui Alexander, Anthony Appiah, Cathy
Cohen, Samuel Delany, Elias Farajaje-Jones, Coco Fusco, Isaac Julien, Simon Nkoli,
and many more. A film by Shari Frilot - supported by the Ford Foundation -—
poetically documented the conference, capturing its intense analyses, passionate
debates, and nitty-gritty organizing.

Only a month later, CLAGS pulled out the stops again to put on Queer
Theater, which attracted some 400 folks to a range of panels, roundtables, play-
readings, and performances that put scholars and critics in conversation with
theater-makers on such topics as the Spectacle of Queer Protest, Queering the
Canon, Theater and AIDS, and Solo Performance; Jill Dolan and Brian Freeman
were the keynoters and presenters included Joan Jett Black, Jennifer Brody, Sue-
Ellen Case, Holly Hughes, Larry Kramer, Tony Kushner, Ania Loomba, Everett
Quinton, David Roman, Lawrence Senelick, Paula Vogel, and Chay Yew. The first

site-specific, movable feast of CLAGS conferences, QT took place at four histor-
ically important venues for queer theater: Judson Memorial
Church, La Mama, New York Theater Workshop, and the Public

Theater.
As the school year ended, a new committee was already
NEW Yor planning a major conference for the following winter,
“Identity/Space/Power: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender
Politics,” which brought a range of analysts and activists together
SAPPHIRE ee just as simmering debates in the movement were bubbling into
mainstream consciousness with the publication of dueling books by
Andrew Sullivan and Urvashi Vaid. Ever keeping an eye on the
in, development of the field more generally, in 1995-96, CLAGS
launched its syllabi collection project, hoping to make samples
available to anyone wanting to
CARLETON consult them as LGBTQ Studies
courses continued to sprout up
all over. Indeed, calls came into
the office — now staffed by several
part-time graduate students — from
all corners of the country. (And the
a project became even more effective

when we launched our website a

couple of years later.)

Early supporters of CLAGS.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3

Yale and had taught there. He was cautious
but somewhat encouraging. He said it would
be touchy because a lot of alumni would
raise hell. Of course the climate wasn’t as
open 15 years ago.

He said | should gather some people
and draw up a five-year plan. That led me to
invite some people to come to my living
room and start talking about what this might
be. Within a couple of months we had 15 or
20 people showing up for meetings. They
included George Chauncey, Esther Newton,
the bookstore owner Corey Friedlander, John
Boswell, Ralph Hexter, Jewelle Gomez, Carol
Smith Rosenberg, Ruby Rich, Larry Gross, Al
Novic, Anthony Appiah, Carole Vance. Some
dropped out saying that institutionalizing
Lesbian and Gay Studies would interfere with
the imperative that it stay local.

Did you share those concerns?
Absolutely. | agreed that Gay and
Lesbian Studies could lose its connection to
local communities given how academia
drains the juice from all experience. But it
was up to us to do it a different way because

_ if we could get gay studies institutionalized,

people could get jobs, support for their
research, and so on.

How did ‘CLAGS end up at CUNY
instead of Yale?

_ We had continued to meet, ae had
broken into committees such as program and
governance. Boswell came back with some

_ bylaws suggesting that the center should be -

controlled on a daily basis by Yale faculty
members with tenure. Many of us said, “If
you insist on this, it means the center will be
controlled by the same white men as
everything else because no
people of color or out
lesbians have tenure.” After

CONTINUED ON
PAGE 6

Jill Dolan, Joey Arias, and
Martin Duberman at a CLAGS

reception


no?

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5

some discussion — and there were some very
accomplished women in the room — Boswell
_ walked out. Five days later | got a long,

_ Spiteful letter from him resigning and
denouncing all the people in the room, cc’d
to Benno Schmidt. That was the end of it at

_ Yale. And to tell the truth, that came as a
_ considerable relief. Along with San Francisco,

New York is the center of gay life in the US.
___and it made sense to have CLAGS here.

| went to see Harold Proshansky, who
was then head of the CUNY Graduate Center,
_and he was immediately warmly welcoming.
__ It was stunning. He said, “I really want to
_thank you for coming to me with this idea.
It’s long overdue” Of course he then said we

had to raise $50,000 to prove we were

__ viable. That took us five years. No foundation

_ would support a gay and lesbian organization

at that point, and for many gay donors,
scholarship was not where they wanted to
send checks i in the middle of the AIDS crisis.

What spits oF things ebepalecl yous
CLAGS got going? The amount of
__ research in the works? Its range?

It wasn’t the research that surprised me —

_ 1 expected that. It was more the kind of

covert homophobia we encountered. It felt as

though we were constantly being
coutmaneuvered. For instance, we had

tremendous trouble just getting assigned an —
___ Office. | forget how long it took, but when |

finally got one, it had electric wires hanging

_ from the ceiling, no furniture, no light bulbs.

It was an absolute wasteland. It took us more
_ than six months just to get two chairs. And
_ getting our events listed in the Grad
School publications was not easy. —
Though Proshansky was
supportive, there were some rock-
solid mid- imanagerient homophebes
around.

_ That seems to have improved,

Once Frances Horowitz came
along [as Grad Center president] she
was wonderfully friendly and helpful.

__ And getting the Rockefeller grant

_ was the biggest deal in the early
years. That put the stamp of
approval on us.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 7

CLAGS ran into its first blatant bout of homophobia that year, too — at least

in terms of programming -- as the Americas Society removed our name as a co-

sponsor of a conference we helped organize, “Margin/Center: Emergent Discourses

in Latin American and Latino Literature and Culture.” CLAGS board members Elena

Martinez and Oscar Montero, who had worked on planning the event, raised the

issue at a panel they were part of, and dozens of conference participants signed a

letter of protest of a homophobic gesture that, as Montero said at the time, “gave

particular urgency to an event whose goal had been to deal precisely with issues of

power, marginalization, and strategies of representation.”

Americas Society’s actions only served to highlight the importance of CLAGS,

but many more positive developments fed our sense that our mission remained

vital. Calls and emails of inquiry — and applications for our fellowships -- continued

to come in, not just from all over North America, but from Europe, Latin America,

Africa, and Asia. That year the Rockefeller Foundation announced the almost

unprecedented renewal of its grant, underwriting another three years of fellowships

and programming around the theme “Citizenship and Sexualities: Transcultural

Constructions.”

New Leadership

In 1996, Martin Duberman announced that after five years of forming CLAGS

and another five of running it, the time had come for him to refocus his energies

on his teaching, research and writing. Jill Dolan, a leading scholar of feminist and

LGTBQ performance, who had been a professor in the Theater program at the

Grad Center as well as a CLAGS board member for several years, ably and energet-

ically stepped in as CLAGS’s new executive director in the Fall. In her first year,

CLAGS presented “Crossing National and Sexual Borders: A Latina/o and Latin

American Conference,” celebrated the publication of The CLAGS Reader and Queer

Representations: Reading Lives, Reading Cultures, both published by NYU Press and

edited by Marty Duberman, and received a generous bequest from

Michael C.P. Ryan to produce an annual series of

programs exploring political, cultural, and

artistic questions facing LGTBQ Latino/as in

the US and Latin America.

Francisco Casa
performs at the 1996

Crossing Borders Conference.

Graduate Center President
Frances Horowitz with 1997-98
Kessler Honoree Samuel Delany.



The historical transformations in homosexual behavior :
that began to occur in western societies after 1700, and ; A k f || F |

that in the last 130 years have produced a public : 0C C C | C OWS
political discussion, need to remain the focus of :
scholarly discussion and public policy. Studies of literary

texts that are not ostensibly about homosexuality seem
to be less useful. Instead the question whether

CLAGS's Rockefeller Fellowship
in the Humanities grant ran over
the course of six years and

assisted the work of these
homosexual behavior in Asia, Africa and the Islamic pats
world is following something like the path in the west ‘
. since 1700 needs to be systematically addressed. 1993-94
oo eee ee Carra Leah Hood, Contending

Forces or the Ecology of

0 Contagion and Desire
Arnaldo Cruz- Charles I. Nero, Invisible Lives:
Malavé and Black Gay Men, Domesticity and
Martin the Reconstruction of Manhood
Manalansan di
at the Queer aacaeie A Place in the
Globalizations, . Wesley Thomas : Rainbow: cuties Identities,
Local and Cindy Patton at the Queer : and the Controversies over
Homosexualities Globalizations, Local Homosexualities : Teaching about Lesbian and Gay
conference. : conference. Issues in Public Education

: Allan Bérubé, A Third Red, A
Third Black, A Third Queer:
Queer Work and Sexual
Identities in the Marine Cooks
and Stewards Union
Around the US, LGTBQ Studies was enjoying a major growth spurt. The University of Wisconsin i 1995-96
in Madison had just reported on its two-year study of LGTBQ issues in its curricula and campus life eee ee eee
: Bonds: The History of Politics of
while the University of California-Riverside established an interdisciplinary undergraduate minor in : Lesbian and Transgender
Lesbian and Gay Studies. Meanwhile, the University of Minnesota received a nearly half-a-million-dollar ; Identities and Communities
: Jeffrey Edwards, City Politics
grant from alum Steven J. Schochet to support the development of LGTBQ Studies and services there. : and the Trajectory of Lesbian-
CLAGS was strengthening our connections to scholars, teachers and new centers and sharing : Gay Political Development: New
: York City and San Francisco,
strategies for building the field nationally — and beyond. : 1969-present
* : 1996-97
LGTBQ Studies Attacked ee gee
Around that time, even as Ellen In 1992 (I think) I gave a talk at one of the first : aod
: : : ; conferences held byCLAGS at CUNY. My presentation ; 3 :
DeGeneres was coming out in a primetime was entitled "The Event of Becoming" and although i MIrane Jaren: Performing
sitcom, Congress was debating the Defense the audience was predominantly white and male it Com, 2 ane a
was sprinkled with enough people of color and : oot ts (0 lato lge sco
of Marriage Act and the Employment Non- lesbians to represent an amazing cross section of the : Century United hosed :
Discrimination Act — and voting against queer community. Several things impressed me in : Ureash Vaid, legee NY
: 4 those moments as I spoke to the assembly. First, ! : Constituchcey, ard Statewide:
LGTBQ rights in both instances. was struck by the magnitude of the fact that we : emiesie a NeW meee i
Meanwhile, efforts to establish domestic were assembled at all in an auditorium of the City i Increaaing) POrEsI Pail dit HAEee
é : : University in midtown Manhattan as out Queer Ciganleatone:
partnership benefits on campuses and in people. This was something that | could not have
cities were heating up and several Sa ela ie heer ai ad ce Meg fs +eementeaar
: ‘ i Another startling thought | had was an sata anes ;
a notorious custody cases, in which understanding of how much people had sacrificed on : ies powality, Madeinihy,
2 children were taken away from LGTBQ our way to having an academic discipline devoted to ; Citizenship Fever
: : i the study of our lives. That sacrifice was palpable in i ponte > mel, pay ica
ry parents, were clashing with the images of the the air around me---those who'd died of AIDS, as well expend the ae of African
much ballyhooed “lesbian baby boom.” Once as those who'd died in closets of alcoholism and ane sai ass and oe Je
shame or those who'd died at the hands of Within Black Communities
again, CLAGS offered a program, “Relatively homophobic violence. The spirit of those who'd
Speaking,” that both explained and analyzed given up their professional careers in order to create Legg
political movements of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s ; Ba eed eed
such developments, but that also asked deeper, were also in that auditorium. Each of them, named : Memoirs
contextual questions, including what the and unnamed, was responsible for our event of ceeds ase leas
becoming the group in that auditorium. The i Lest eat ines,
benefits and pitfalls might be of spending so importance of remembering those histories, and of : Bde us ae ees
much of our nascent political capital on family remembering the political philosophies underlying all pee
: academic study crystalized for me that day and that
Issues. remembering has become the subtext of all the
y creative work I do. PvE
JEWELLE GOMEZ Sea kk gas su So ou vac Sass Moers eI OLE Pose ote Mea Sac e¥



CONTINUED FROM PAGE

Of course, you had encountered some
homophobic resistance at the Grad

Center long before.

Around 1976 or ‘77, | proposed
teaching a course at the Grad Center on the
history of sexuality. The department not only
turned it down. They said | was not a bona
fide scholar, but a polemicist, that there was
no such subject matter as the history of
sexuality. | was finally allowed to teach it in
1991. Things have really changed. How

wonderful that is.

So what did it feel like when CLAGS

was actually up and running?

It was so exciting. Of course tensions
and arguments constantly surfaced, But we
knew the work was pioneering and that kept
us committed. Our very first event in 1989,
before we were officially established, featured
George Chauncey, Jewelle Gomez, and Esther
_ Newton talking about gay and lesbian life in
New York City -- to a filled auditorium.
Everyone was delighted. It was thrilling. Not
that from a scholarly point of view it broke
any notable new ground. But just to have that
kind of enthusiastic gathering. To this day |
never go to a Kessler that doesn’t thrill me.

What makes you most proud of

CLAGS?

| think we can be proud of the real
diversity in the committees of CLAGS and
certainly in our programming. From our first _
meeting, we said we’d be run by a group
_that was 50-50 male-female and that has ©
remained a principle. Over the years other
issues surfaced and we grappled with them. |
think we've done a lot of wonderful work to
put our varied communities in touch with
each other and all have profited from the

varied insights. I’m proud that our

fellowships have often gone to people
marginalized within the world of LGBT
scholarship. In general | think we have a
record to be proud of — though god knows,
there were tough times. Every gay organi-
zation reproduces all the tensions that exist
within the bigger community. At least we

fought them through.

CONTINUED ON PAGE

a1

LGBTQ Studies made headlines in 1997-98 as Yale
University declined a gift from Larry Kramer to establish a
program in the field there, and when right-wing anti-tax

activists used a women’s sexuality conference at SUNY-New

Paltz to turn public sentiment against support of the state

university system. CLAGS responded — without dropping

the on-going colloquium series or other well-established

programs - by initiating an Advocacy committee that

might fortify the bridge CLAGS had long been building

between academe and activism. Among other things,

the committee drafted and helped distribute statements on such

controversies to provide some sensible analysis, and soon had branched out further
by creating our popular Seminars in the City — a series of monthly reading groups
open to the public and led by a CLAGS board member with a focused theme each
semester. Still going strong, the Seminars have taken up such subjects as Lesbian
and Gay Fiction, Queer Theory, Latino/a LGTBQ Cultures, Transgender Politics, and
Economics.

CLAGS also presented a panel on the volatile politics of race and sexuality in
the NYC elections that fall, a roundtable on arts censorship and its relationship to
homophobia as the NEA 4 case was making its way to the Supreme Court, and a
one-day symposium called “Anxious Pleasures: The Erotics of Pedagogy” with Jane
Gallop and several supporting as well as detracting commentators. In the Spring,
CLAGS presented another cutting-edge, three-day conference, “Queer
Globalization, Local Homosexualities: Citizenship, Sexuality, and the Afterlife of
Colonialism,” where speakers included Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé, Martin Manalansan,
Michael Moon, Geeta Patel, Chela Sandoval, Gayatri Spivak, and Ella Shohat.

Shortly after the Fall 1998 semester began, Matthew Shepard was murdered
in Laramie, and New Yorkers who gathered for a public funeral were greeted with a
police crackdown that shocked the demonstrators — and politicized many of them.
At the Creating Change meeting
in Pittsburgh that year, students

and faculty from colleges across
the country reported on a campus

crisis of radical right organizing

against LGTBQ advances.

Wisconsin judges agreed with

conservative plaintiffs who

objected to student activity fees

Paula Ettlebrick and Urvashi Vaid opr



that supported “ideologically oriented” student groups, meaning, among others, those representing CLAGS Board Members

through the years

LGTBQ students and racial and ethnic minorities. Though the Supreme Court was to reverse the

decision a couple of years later, new suits are achieving the same result now by hewing more closely to

the specifications the Court spelled out. Closer to home, the SUNY board of trustees voted feces
to reinstall a core curriculum for undergraduates — without any consultation ; Juan Battle
of faculty or campus administrators — and the attacks on CUNY a Pa tiainn
Can s. by the governor, mayor, and tabloid press were Cal canen
: Elizabeth Crespo

getting nastier by the day.

Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé
Paisley Currah
George Custen
Gabriel de la Portilla
Kay Diaz

jill Dolan

Martin Duberman
Lisa Duggan
06 Richard Elovich
David Eng
; Jeffrey Escoffier
Paula Ettelbrick
Gerard Fergerson
>~ Licia Fiol-Matta
6 = f , és , William Fisher
: : Byrne Fone
Elizabeth Freeman

Studies and lives, and about CUNY, SUNY, and other universities ; Marcia Gallo
Deborah Gambs

under attack (NYU was taking hits, too, for a queer conference) was to keep on ine eal
3 5 ey . 3 i . jackie Goldsby
giving platforms to good, wide-ranging, deep-thinking scholarship. A pioneering Queer Middle : Manolo Guzman
a i ‘ é : : Robin Hackett
Ages conference drew hundreds of participants - among them Judith Bennett, Daniel Boyarin, Michael i Ann Pollinger Haas
: Sharon P. Holland
: Amber Hollibaugh
and CLAGS also presented a one-day symposium called Passing Performances, where theater scholars : oc tinee
discussed work addressing the sexualities of earlier generations of performers and producers. “Crossing ae ne
: David M. Kahn
Carol Kaplan
: Robert Kaplan
I think that LGBT studies has come a : Esther Katz
long way, but that it needs to : John Keene
: Seymour Kleinberg

3 : Larry LaFountain-Stokes
American Studies and Women's ? Arthur S. Leonard

Studies in a way that goes beyond a : Harriet Malinowitz
tacit connection, but embraces how : Martin Manalansan
imbricated these disciplines really are. : Jaime Manrique
For example, can we discuss queer ; Dough tAae

: Elena M. Martinez
bashing without really talking about Don Mengay

misogyny or racism? Respect for our Rosalba Messina
disciplinary strengths can only grow : Framji Minwalla
when we do some of that work. : Sylvia Molloy

SHARON P. HOLLAND Oscar Montero
José Mufioz

Frances Negrén-Muntaner
Esther Newton
Vivien Ng

Ricardo Ortiz

Ann Pellegrini
Samuel Phillips
Jasbir Puar

José Quiroga
Shepherd Raimi
Ruthann Robson
Joe Rollins

Mimi Rupp
Francesca Canadé Sautman
James Smalls

Alisa Solomon
Kendall Thomas
Sharon Thompson
Randolph Trumbach
David Valilee

W. Kirk Wallace

E. Frances White
Ara Wilson

Alan Yang

Holly Hughes, Jane Rosett, : eeasenae
Esther Newton and Jean Carlomusto. 1 ig

CLAGS continued

to insist that one of the best ways to

correct the mendacious statements about LGTBQ i "

Camille, Carolyn Dinshaw, Steven Kruger, Karma Lochrie, Afsaneh Najmabadi, and Everett Rowson —

recognize its roots in African

Randolph Trumbach and Thomas Ybarra-Frausto at the Dec. 2,
1993 "At The Frontier" conference.

ODF



Alisa Solomon and Framji
Minwalla at the Queer
Theater conference.

CLAGS Staff
through the years

Robert Ausch
Preston Bautista
Rachel Cohen
Heidi Coleman
John Di Carlo

Dan Evans
Graeme Fullerton
Sara Ganter
Stephanie Grant
Erin Hurley

Jay Plum

James Presley
Matt Rottnek
Jordan Schildcrout
Desiree Yael Vester
Jonathan Warman
James Wilson

Eli Zal

10 :

Borders II:
Autobiography, Testimony and

Self-Figuration in Latino/a and Latin
American Literature” was another three-day triumph. And

in April, “Local to Global: Academics and Activist Thinking Toward a

Queer Future” brought standing-room crowds to two days of roundtable sessions
addressing such issues as Human Rights activism, Migration and Immigration, and Violence and
Policing, with such participants as Leslie Cagan, Ruth Gilmore, Nan Hunter, Joo-Hyun Kang,
Robin Kelley, Scott Long, Gail Pheterson, Chandan Reddy, and Graciela Sanchez.

The year was topped off by two new developments that extended the dissemination of
LGTBQ work: a lively email discussion listserv — gendersexstudies-l — and a book series with NYU Press,
Sexual Cultures: New Directions from CLAGS, with general editors José Mufioz and Ann Pellegrini.

Spring ‘99 also brought the announcement from Jill Dolan that she’d be taking a position at the
University of Texas-Austin. The director’s torch was passed to Alisa Solomon, a long-time professor of
English/Journalism at CUNY’s Baruch College, who also has appointments in English and Theater at the
Graduate Center. A journalist as well, Alisa had spent three full terms on the CLAGS board of directors.

Acting Globally and Locally

In Fall ‘99 CLAGS moved with the Graduate Center to a new home - the old B. Altman
department store building. The improved quarters for programs — and some agitation from disability
activists -- helped CLAGS develop a steadfast policy on accessibility for its events.

“Crossing Borders III” and a trailblazing major Spring conference — “Whose Millennium? Religion,
Sexuality, and the Values of Citizenship,” which considered why sexuality is a site of such intense
religious regulation, why religious organizations are often the sites of resistance to such regulation, and

other thorny questions — were well

into the planning stages and while

CLAGS was increasingly thinking

globally in much of its programming

and network-building, we were also

rededicating ourselves to acting

locally. Board members formed a
CUNY committee to increase CLAGS's

response to graduate students and to i naive

the CUNY campuses, and that spring, “ ' :
put on the first annual Queer CUNY

conference, which brought students,

staff, and faculty together from almost

all Cie eye. colleges. tn Robert Vazquez-Pacheco, Michael Warner and Kerry Lobel at the

addition, in the wake of the Human "Imagining the Future Panel."


Rights Campaign’s endorsement of conservative, race-baiting, anti-choice NY
Senator Al D’Amato and as the controversial Millennium March

was approaching, CLAGS presented a discussion on the state of

the LGTBQ movement at Baruch College, featuring Kerry

Lobel, Robert Vazquez-Pacheco, and Michael Warner. (No

conservative representative agreed to join the panel, despite

some dozen invitations.)

In a collaboration with NYU’s new Center for the Study
of Gender and Sexuality, CLAGS started up a pedagogy
workshop called “Lesson Plans,” where seasoned and fledgling
LGTBQ teachers alike could trade strategies and questions.
More than 50 hungry people turned up for the first session,
reflecting the dearth of opportunities to talk not only about

teaching LGTBQ Studies, but about teaching at all. The Essex Hemphill’s

workshops have met several times per semester ever since. ‘Living the Word"
presentation,
1993.

Building LGBTQ Studies at
CUNY—and Beyond

Fall 2000 saw the initiation of an Interdisciplinary Concentration of LGTBQ
Studies at the CUNY Grad Center — as far as we know, the first of its kind — and a
new course on the roster, Introduction to Lesbian and Gay/Queer Studies, taught

in this first round by political scientist Mark Blasius. Enrollment was high — and so

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8

What stands out

were the levels of energy and discussion in the classroom. CLAGS is now looking

toward upgrading the concentration — through which a PhD student in a

traditional discipline may also pursue LGBTQ Studies — to a certificate program,

and toward increasing the number of courses in the field on offer.

Our programming continued — colloquium series, Seminars in the City,

Lesson Plans — plus a special roundtable on the role of feminism in, and lessons

from Women’s Studies for
LGTBQ Studies — while
committees worked on
our upcoming Spring
conferences — Crossing
Borders IV (to be held in
Austin, Texas), Queer
CUNY II (to be held at
Queens College) and
Building LGTBQ Studies
Into the University:
Program Planning for the
21st Century, which, like
our 10th anniversary, will

offer a good moment for

us to look back on what's been achieved in the first formal decade of the field, and

Because it is located at the CUNY Graduate Center,
CLAGS is in a unique position to serve as a focal point
for the development of queer studies within one of
the largest public university systems in the country,
serving a student population that is majority non-
white, immigrant or working class. The moment that
for me most signified that possibility was last year's
inaugural Queer CUNY conference, when more than
50 faculty, graduate students and undergraduate
students from many of the CUNY campuses came
together for the first time ever to discuss queer life
and studies within the CUNY system. The networks
that began to form from that conference, and that
are continuing to develop as this year's conference
draws closer, reinforce the importance of CLAGS's
commitment to the queer component of public
education, especially when the concept of public
education itself is increasingly under attack.
ROBERT KAPLAN

to look ahead toward strengthening and expanding on it.

11

for you as your
favorite CLAGS
event?

That lovely
evening with Essex
Hemphill [in
March, 1993]. It
was just Essex
reading and talking
to us -- a tender
night. Also the
Simon LeVay
debate was a
highlight. He went right on smiling as William
Byne and Carole Vance tore his research apart!

The world has changed in 15 years.
LGTBQ Studies is much more available
now and students have different
expectations.

The growth has been amazing. In my
classes, the younger generation of queers can’t
be bothered debating a lot of the issues we
wrestled with for so long and thought were so
central -- monogamy, bisexuality, whether
lifetime pair-bonding is the “route to
happiness”. They really seem to be living what
theorists have been telling us about sexual
fluidity. The evolution has been startling — and
wondrous.

The field seems to have much wider
acceptance now. Does that have an
impact on CLAGS’s role?

| wonder about the level of that
acceptance. My current gripe is that most of
the straight left is not listening. They think
they've gotten our message and they support
our civil rights, but they have not understood
our lives. They’re unwilling to hear about the
ways we might be different from them; we’ve
had a different historical experience that’s
produced different perspectives and styles of
living, and what's more, values and insights
that have a lot to say to the mainstream. The
mainstream left is not willing to open its ears
to what we have to say about gender and
relationships and partnering and parenting and
sexuality. | think in a brief period of time we
have developed a body of work containing
substantive insights on a wide variety of issues
that are essential, or should be, to anyone.
They ain’t listening: they don’t want to be
challenged. @


Recalling four years of
planning committee
meetings in Marty
Duberman's living room, a
saga with a continuing core
cast and many who came
and went, I think of my
favorite passage in the
Mishnah. The sage Hillel is
cited as asking, "If | am not
for myself, who is for me?
And if | am only for myself,
what am I? And if not now,
when?" Even for a stone
atheist like me, the spirit of
Hillel's questions seemed to
be the unstated inspiration
for our efforts.

LARRY GROSS

Looking Ahead

CLAGS has come a long way in a short time, presenting more than 100 public programs, where

more than 1000 different people have offered their findings and queries; awarding more than 60

fellowships and prizes; collaborating with dozens of academic, community and activist organizations on

programming; and solidifying LGBTQ Studies at the Grad Center and beyond. We are proud to have

played a part in the explosion of LGTBQ scholarship in the last decade. The ground has shifted consid-

erably in that time. True, our work — and our lives — are still under attack. Witness the use right-wing

politicians in Michigan tried to make of David Halperin’s course at the University of Michigan last fall,

and right-wing fund-raising appeals from Ollie
North that whine, “It isn’t fair. Yale bans ROTC
yet offers courses like Introduction to Lesbian and
Gay Studies!” But there are now more than 75
LGBTQ Studies programs at colleges around the
country. New centers have sprouted up all over
and on any given night nowadays, in New York
City alone you could probably find at least one
LGBTQ Studies talk being given at a campus or
community space. This abundance fuels our
determination to solidify LGBTQ Studies at
CUNY, to continue fostering and disseminating
first-rate scholarship, and to venture vigorously
into new territories. We're beginning to
concentrate on building stronger international
networks, for instance, and on making more and
more materials available as our book series grows
and our website gets 250 hits per week.

As Bush fils moves into the White House,
CLAGS is well-poised to continue providing deep
discussion of issues and experiences that are so
often caricatured and dismissed. Holding fast to a
founding principle that ideas and knowledge
have the capacity to expand understanding,
make a positive impact on public policy, and
change individual lives, we look forward to

another decade of serious
inquiry, exchange, debate —

and celebration. @

Oscar Montero, Jacqui
Alexander, and Elena Martinez at Crossing
National and Sexual Borders, 1996.

_ Christopher Street Financial, Inc.
_ City University of New York

_ David Healy Clarke Estate

_ Aaron Diamond Foundation ©
_ Office of City Council Member Tom Duane
_Lucius and Eva Eastman Fund _

: Funding Exchange/OUT Fund =
_GillFoundation _—s_ poe
_ Office of State Assembly Member .

Isiuinalfouatn :

Support over the years

_ Over the course of ten years, a number of

foundations and institutional supporters have
been instrumental in sustaining our organi-
zation. We are proud to have built alliances
with and presented pregranning® with as

_ assistance of:
_Alconda-Owsley Foundation

Astraea National Lesbian Action Foundation

- Bills Foundation
Carillon Importers.

Chicago Resource Center

Ford Foundation —

_ Deborah Glick _

_ Manhattan State Assembly Delegation _

Grace R. and Alan D. Marcus Foundation . _.

Joan R. McAlpin. Charitable Lead Trust

Office of Ruth Messinger

_ Stewart R. Mott Charitable Trust =

_ Richard Nathan Anti-Homophobia Trusts
New American Library

New York City Lesbian and Gay Funding |

_ Collaborative.

_ New York Council for the Humanities _.
_ Northstar Fund — .

Norton. Family Foundation

_ Open Meadows Foundation

Pride Institute

Office of City Council Member

Christine Quinn

_ Paul Rapoport Foundation
_ Paul Rapoport Fund
_ Rockefeller Foundation

Michael C.P. Ryan Estate
United Way of New York