Available From UC Press

Over the course of the last half century, queer history has developed as a collaborative project involving academic researchers, community scholars, and the public. Initially rejected by most colleges and universities, queer history was sustained for many years by community-based contributors and audiences. Academic activism eventually made a place for queer history within higher education, which in turn helped queer historians become more influential in politics, law, and society. Through a collection of essays written over three decades by award-winning historian Marc Stein, Queer Public History charts the evolution of queer historical interventions in the academic sphere and explores the development of publicly oriented queer historical scholarship. From the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and the rise of queer activism in the 1990s to debates about queer immigration, same-sex marriage, and the politics of gay pride in the early twenty-first century, Stein introduces readers to key themes in queer public history. A manifesto for renewed partnerships between academic and community-based historians, strengthened linkages between queer public history and LGBT scholarly activism, and increased public support for historical research on gender and sexuality, this anthology reconsiders and reimagines the past, present, and future of queer public history. 

Marc Stein, the Jamie and Phyllis Pasker Professor of History at San Francisco State University, is the author of City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, Sexual Injustice: Supreme Court Decisions from Griswold to Roe, Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement, and The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History. 

"Marc Stein's Queer Public History is an invaluable work that moves the discussion, meaning, and importance of queer lives and actions out of the academy and into the public world. Stein's work here is a vivid, deeply illuminating mixture of research, cogent analysis, reportage, observation, and community interactions. It is a shining light for everyone concerned about the future of queer history."—Michael Bronski, author of A Queer History of the United States  

"In this reflective collection of essays, queer historian Marc Stein intimately contextualizes his commitment to making academic work relevant to the public. Best known as a historian of constitutional law, Stein's work here on the Supreme Court's betrayal of LGBT immigrants, on the closeting of Justice Abe Fortas, and on pre-Stonewall rebellions is surprising and gripping. A representative of the first generation of university professors to be out in their work from the start of their careers, Stein honors his mentors and provides a front seat social history of the experiences of the early wave of queer academics, their contradictions and struggles. Personal and vulnerable."—Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987–1993 

"These brilliant, brave essays present original, quality queer public history and teach how to do that. They're the work of a historian long dedicated to reaching a wide, general audience and maintaining the highest scholarly standards."—Jonathan Ned Katz, Founder, Director, OutHistory.org 

"It's hard to know what historical scholarship would look like today without queer history, and even harder to imagine how either would have evolved without Marc Stein's queer vision for what history can and should do. An activist intellectual, Stein has devoted his career to the rigorous, publicly engaged scholarship these essays describe. Together they reflect on not just a generation's hard-fought journey from community-based research to the university lecture hall but on queer history as an inherently publicly engaged and useful practice whose vitality depends on nurturing its connection to an ever-changing community."—Claire Potter, Professor of History, The New School for Social Research

"Authored by one of the foremost thinkers in LGBTQ studies, this book offers an intimate look at the many faces of queer public history and practice. Through poignant storytelling, memoir, reflection, research, and analysis, Stein reveals the important and necessary activist and community-based work that is inextricably linked to the recovery of LGBTQ pasts."—Julio Capó Jr., author of Welcome to Fairyland: Queer Miami before 1940