Join historian Stephen Vider and novelist, playwright, and nonfiction writer Sarah Schulman for a conversation about Vider’s new book, The Queerness of Home: Gender, Sexuality, and the Politics of Domesticity after World War II. Histories of LGBTQ activism and culture have centered almost exclusively on acts of public protest and demands for visibility. In The Queerness of Home, Vider turns the focus inward, showing that the intimacy of domestic space has been equally crucial to the history of LGBTQ life and politics. From gay and lesbian marriages in the 1950s, to queer communes and lesbian architecture in the 1970s, to caregiving for people living with HIV/AIDS, Vider shows how LGBTQ people have continuously worked to reinvent the home, reshaping the meanings of family and remapping the boundaries of their own communities.

Safety protocol:

In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:

Please bring proof of vaccination with you.

You will need to show proof of vaccination and a photo id in order to attend the event.

If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.

Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.

Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.

All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.

We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or you can donate in advance on Eventbrite.

Purchase Stephen Vider’s The Queerness of Home: Gender, Sexuality, and the Politics of Domesticity after World War II (University of Chicago Press, 2022, paperback, $29) from the Bureau’s online store (click on the title).

Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

Stephen Vider is assistant professor of history and director of the Public History Initiative at Cornell University, and author of The Queerness of Home: Gender, Sexuality, and the Politics of Domesticity after World War II, published in December 2021 by University of Chicago Press. His writing has appeared in American Quarterly, Gender & History, Transition, and The Public Historian, as well as the New York Times, Slate, and Avidly, among other places. In 2017, he curated the exhibition AIDS at Home: Art and Everyday Activism, at the Museum of the City of New York, exploring how activists and artists have mobilized domestic space and redefined family in response to HIV/AIDS, from the 1980s to the present. He was also co-curator of Gay Gotham: Art and Underground Culture in New York, featured at the Museum of the City of New York from 2016 to 2017, and co-author of the accompanying book.

Sarah Schulman is the author of more than twenty works of fiction (including The Cosmopolitans, Rat Bohemia, and Maggie Terry), nonfiction (including Stagestruck, Conflict is Not Abuse, The Gentrification of the Mind, Let the Record Show), and theater (Carson McCullers, Manic Flight Reaction, and more), and the producer and screenwriter of several feature films (The Owls, Mommy Is Coming, and United in Anger, among others). Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Slate, and many other outlets. She is a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at College of Staten Island, a Fellow at the New York Institute of Humanities, the recipient of multiple fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and was presented in 2018 with Publishing Triangle’s Bill Whitehead Award. She is also the cofounder of the MIX New York LGBT Experimental Film and Video Festival, and the co-director of the groundbreaking ACT UP Oral History Project. A lifelong New Yorker, she is a longtime activist for queer rights and female empowerment, and serves on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace. (Author photo by Drew Stevens)