Queer Studies - History

History

Lesbian and gay studies originated in the 1970s with the publication of several "seminal works of gay history. Inspired by ethnic studies, women's studies, and similar identity-based academic fields influenced by 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 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.