Fifteenth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women
Friday, June 10, 2011

Report by Nick Syrett

I had the distinct pleasure of chairing this session devoted to queer students, professors, and their classes in the twentieth-century United States. Stephanie Gilmore began the session with a paper about her current research on anti-LGBT violence and harassment on college campuses, part of a historical-sociological project focusing on three small liberal arts colleges. Because Gilmore still has not been able to gain access to the archival records of the decisions to include LGB people in anti-discrimination policies on these campuses (under FERPA, these records are sealed for 25 years), Gilmore primarily highlighted the ways that anti-LGBT violence is or is not recognized and acknowledged by students or officials on college campuses. As she put it, clearly we know it exists; the problem is making it intelligible as its own phenomenon. She also demonstrated that while college administrations love the idea of adding “diversity” to college campuses (in the form of queer people), they have a difficult time acknowledging that these same students are the targets of violence/harassment, or indeed that they themselves might have the power to do something about it. She set us up well for an interesting discussion about the politics of FERPA and colleges’ responsibilities to their students—all their students—in the Q&A period.

Susan Freeman gave a paper about the first queer history and studies classes on college campuses, demonstrating that, contrary to current course offering decisions, these classes were borne of student demand, and indeed were sometimes taught by students. Often housed in “free universities” affiliated with traditional colleges and universities, these classes from the late 60s through early 80s met a student demand for knowledge about queer lives in ways that were concurrent with, and sometimes overlapped with, political concerns. Freeman offered us a new way to think both about an understudied part of gay liberation struggles and the way that queer studies first entered the academy at a time before its institutionalization in Women’s Studies and other programs.

Heather Murray’s paper focused on what she called “the pathos of the closet and the generations” in its exploration of how gay students and their professors both interacted and imagined each other during and after the period of gay liberation in the 1970s. Using fascinating evidence from memoirs, letters, and nascent queer student groups, Murray argued that gay students tended to oscillate between a feeling of pity and distance toward their professors in the early period and a fascination with the workings of being in the closet, which was sometimes eroticized. Professors sometimes advocated a therapeutic approach to their interactions with queer students. In the later period (80s and afterwards), Murray suggested that professors performing their homosexuality in the classroom (through coming out, for instance) had become both more obligatory, routinized, and occasionally exhausting. In this analysis she explored what was lost in the movement between the two periods, highlighting the surprising possibilities of the closet.

Shanté Smalls offered comment before we discussed. Smalls focused particularly on the importance of the archive for the pursuit of queer history, and then also initiated a fascinating discussion about the politics of pedagogical relationships between students and teachers, especially in an era where more and more students and their professors now differ by race, class, gender identity, and age. Suggesting that professors often have as much to gain from their interactions as do students, Smalls encouraged a fruitful discussion about the pleasures and occasional perils of student-professor interactions. Questions then focused on the politics of these relationships, the content of early queer studies classes, and the ways in which campus policies around sexual assault and harassment tend to protect the accused at the expense of their alleged victims.