LGBT historian and former Philadelphian Marc Stein will give two presentations next month based on his recent work on Philadelphia LGBT history.
Stein, author of seminal local LGBT history book “City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945-72,” will give a presentation from 6:30-9 p.m. Oct. 1 in the Goodhand Room at the University of Pennsylvania LGBT Center, 3907 Spruce St. He will discuss his 2012 book, “Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement: Historical Perspectives,” as part of the Mark D. Gordon Lecture series.
The book provides a “chronologically expansive, geographically broad and culturally diverse overview of the history of U.S. gay and lesbian activism, focusing in particular on the period from 1950-90,” Stein said.
The following day, Stein will present “Canonizing Homophile Sexual Respectability: Archives, History and Memory” from 6:30-8 p.m. Oct. 2 at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1300 Locust St.
Stein will explore what happens to stories about sex and representations of eroticism in the public history, and how queer archivists have tended to favor and elevate more “respectable” articles. The scope of the discussion will encompass the beginning of the modern LGBT movement.
“I go back to the 1970s to when LGBT history was first developing and look at some of the first archival projects that queer historicists worked on,” Stein said. “I ask why they downplayed erotic sex stories.”
The lecture will also touch on how he believes queer archivist behavior in the past is still affecting the field today.
“Today, we all use EBSCO’s new ‘LGBT Life’ database as the primary search engine to find gay history material, but even that excludes one of the most popular historic, and now defunct, gay papers, Drum, which was also the most sexual,” Stein said.
Stein’s presentation will conclude The Library Company’s exhibition on LGBT history, “That’s So Gay: Outing Early America,” on display through Oct. 16.
Stein was appointed the Jamie and Phyllis Pasker Professor of History at San Francisco State University earlier this year. He is a historian of sexuality, a political activist, writer, editor and scholar, and has more than two decades of teaching experience.
Stein received his Ph.D in history from the University of Pennsylvania. He was also the former editor of Gay Community News in Boston, the former chair of the American Historical Associations Committee on LGBT History and is the current chair of the Organization of American Historians’ Committee on the Status of LGBTQ Historians and Histories.
For more information on Stein’s presentation at the Library Company, visit www.thelibrarycompany.org, or for his talk at the Penn LGBT Center, call 215-898-5044.