Modern American Queer History

Allida M. Black is Director and Editor of The Eleanor Roosevelt and Human Rights Project, as well as Research Professor of History, The George Washington University.

"This important collection brings together classic essays with new scholarship in a bold effort to reconfigure the field of lesbian and gay history. Lucid and comprehensive, the book will appeal not just to scholars and students, but to a crossover audience of general readers."-Paula Martinac, author of The Queerest Places: A Guide to Gay and Lesbian Historic Sites "This book is recommended for the queer and unqueer alike. Not only comprehensive and engaging, it also marks an important step in the ongoing effort to define and illustrate the idea of queer scholarship."-Committee on Gay and Lesbian History"[T]his collection offers a more complicated portrayal of the middle of the century, the years between the depression of the 1930s and the social and political revolutions of the 1960s."-The Journal of American History

• Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Where Are We to Begin? – John Howard Part I: Categories of Sexuality2. Romantic Friendship – Leila J. Rupp 3. "Someone to Talk Our Language": Jane Heap, Margaret Anderson, and the Little Review in Chicago – Holly A. Baggett 4. The New Negro Renaissance, A Bisexual Renaissance: The Lives and Works of Angelina Weld GrimkÉ and Richard Bruce Nugent – Brett Beemyn Part II: Evidence, Narrative, and Biography5. "The Burning of Letters Continues": Elusive Identities and the Historical Construction of Sexuality – Estelle B. Freedman 6. Paula Snelling: A Significant Other – Margaret Rose Gladney 7. Homophobia and the Trajectory of Postwar American Radicalism: The Career of Bayard Rustin – John D’Emilio Part III: Science, Fictions8. Perverting the Diagnosis: The Lesbian and the Scientific Basis of Stigma – Allida M. Black 9. "A Thought a Mother Can Hardly Face": Sissy Boys, Parents, and Professionals in Mid-Twentieth-Century America – Julia Grant 10. Something They Did in the Dark: Lesbian and Gay Novels in the United States, 1948-1973 – Chris Freeman Part IV: Community, Institutions11. Rizzo’s Raiders, Beaten Beats, and Coffeehouse Culture in 1950s Philadelphia – Marc Stein 12. Black Feminist Organizations and the Emergence of Interstitial Politics – Kimberly Springer 13. Protest and Protestantism: Early Lesbian and Gay Institution Building in Mississippi – John Howard Part V: Public Debates and Public Policy14. Health Care, the AIDS Crisis, and the Politics of Community: The North Carolina Lesbian and Gay Health Project, 1982-1996 – Ian K. Lekus 15. The Immigrant Infection: Images of Race, Nation, and Contagion in the Public Debates on AIDS and Immigration – Jennifer Brier 16. The Myth of Lesbian (In)Visibility: World War II and the Current "Gays in the Military" Debate – Leisa D. Meyer Conclusion17. Where Are We Now, Where Are We Going, and Who Gets to Say? – Vicki L. Eaklor About the Contributors