The 2015 Organization of American Historians annual meeting (OAH), takes place April 16-19, 2015 in St. Louis, Missouri. This year’s conference theme, “Taboos,” has engendered a number of exciting panels, museum displays and a walking tour related to the history of sexuality, which we have listed for our readers below.
PS: Two of our editors, Gillian Frank and Lauren Gutterman, will be presenting papers at the OAH. If you see them, do say hello.
Museum Displays
Thrill Seekers: The Rise of Men’s Magazines
This exhibit charts the growth of men’s magazines from the 1940s to the 1960s. Drawing from collections in Washington University’s Modern Graphic History Library, this exhibit features artwork of some of the most prominent men’s magazines of the mid-twentieth century, such as Esquire, Playboy, Sports Illustrated, and Fortune, as well as lesser-known pulp fiction and girlie magazines. Artists featured include Al Parker, Robert Weaver, Ernest Trova, Robert Andrew Parker, and Cliff Condak, among others.
Gateway to History: Selections from the St. Louis LGBT History Project
This exhibit will tell the story of the Gateway City’s diverse and vibrant queer past through exhibit panels and artifacts that document activism and politics, arts and entertainment, religion, business, famous residents, and everyday life.
Thursday, April 16
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
Taking on Taboos: Queer Organizing from the 1960s to the 1990s
Chair: Jennifer Brier, University of Illinois at Chicago
Commentator: Melissa Stein, University of Kentucky
The Last Crises of James Tinney, Kevin Mumford, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The Not-So-Discreet Lovers of Emma Jones: Raising Political Consciousness through Beach Parties, Jerry Watkins, Georgia State University
Queerly Faithful: Evaluating the Role of Religion in a Local Struggle for LGBT Equality, Ian Darnell, University of Illinois at Chicago
Original Plumbing and the Remaking of Trans* Culture and Politics, Trevor Joy Sangrey, Washington University in St Louis
1:45 pm – 3:15 pm
Out-of-Bounds: Crossing the Line of Accepted Sexual Practices
Chair: Sharon E. Wood, University of Nebraska Omaha
Commentator: Chad Heap, George Washington University
Taboo at Mizzou: The Policing of Sexual Expression by Students at the University of Missouri, 1945 to 1955, Craig Forrest, University of Missouri–Columbia
“Refugees from Amerika”: The Origins of Gay Liberation in the United States, Kevin Wooten, Washington University in St. Louis
“Against the Peace and Dignity of the State of Kansas”: Community Reactions against Free Love Marriage in the Gilded Age, Andrea Weingartner, Moberly Area Community College
State of the Field: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer History
Chair: Marc Stein
Panelists:
Julio Capó, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Christina Hanhardt, University of Maryland
Kwame Holmes, University of Colorado
Jen Manion, Connecticut College
5:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Interracial Intimacies: An Online Archives and Methodology Teaching Tool (Poster Session)
Presenter: Elise Chenier, Simon Fraser University
Friday, April 17
9:00 am – 10:30 am
Crime, Violence, and the Whitewashing of Queer History
Chair: Regina Kunzel, Princeton University
Commentator: Kevin Murphy, University of Minnesota
“Woman Slain in Queer Love Brawl”: African American Women and Same-Sex Violence in the Early Great Migration, Cookie Woolner, Case Western Reserve University
Jeannace June Freeman: The Making of an Exceptional Lesbian Murder, Lauren Gutterman, University of Michigan
Vulnerable Youths and the Complicated Prosecution of Gay Men in the 1930s, Daniel Hurewitz, Hunter College, CUNY
The Red Taboo in American History
Chair and Commentator: Tony Michels, University of Wisconsin–Madison
“American Girls in Red Russia”: Rethinking the Red Taboo in U.S. Women’s History, Julia Mickenberg, University of Texas at Austin
“The Reddest of the Blacks”: History across the Full Spectrum of Civil Rights Activism, Glenda Gilmore, Yale University
“TWO Witch Hunts”: On (Not) Seeing Red in The Lavender Scare, Aaron Lecklider, University of Massachusetts, Boston
10:50 am – 12:20 pm
Histories beyond “History”: A Conversation about Interdisciplinary Queer Studies
Chair: Regina G. Kunzel, Princeton University
Panelists:
Deborah Gould, University of California, Santa Cruz
Tavia Nyongo, Tisch School of the Arts
Siobhan Somerville, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Katherine Franke, Columbia University
Illicit Economies and Taboo Trades: Excavating the Politics of Black Female Sexuality in Vaudeville, Pornography, and Prostitution in Twentieth-Century America
Chair: Michele Mitchell, New York University
Commentator: Adrienne Davis, Washington University School of Law
“A Broad and Earthy Clown”: The Bodily Politics of Moms Mabley, Cynthia Blair, University of Illinois at Chicago
Sepia Sex Scenes: Black Women’s Erotic Labor in Early Pornographic Film, Mireille Miller-Young, University of California, Santa Barbara
“That He Would Keep Me For Himself”: Hannah Elias, Illicit Sex, and Interracial Intimacy in Plessy-Era New York, Cheryl Hicks, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
1:50 pm – 3:20 pm
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg’s “Female World of Love and Ritual”: Forty Years Later
Chair: Mary Frances Berry, University of Pennsylvania
The Woman-Loving Mulatta and the Promises of Liberal Universalism: The Political Implications of Sexual Transgression, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, University of Michigan
Rituals of Re-Reading: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Women’s History, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Columbia University
The Female Academic’s World of Love and Ritual: Women’s History and Radical Feminism, Claire Potter, The New School for Public Engagement
Sex, Signs, and Sensibility: Feminist Institutionalization and Its Discontent, Suzanna Walters, Northeastern University
5:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Social Hour: Bridge Tap House and Wine Bar (1004 Locust Street)
Saturday, April 18
9:00 am – 10:30 am
Sex on the Border: Race, Gender and the Aberrant Migrant Body
Chair and Commentator: Pablo Mitchell, Oberlin College
Performing and Policing Sex along the U.S.–Mexico Border, 1908–1917, Celeste Menchaca, University of Southern California
Borders, Bodies, and Babies: Race, Nation, and Birthing Practices in the U.S.- Mexico Borderlands, 1930–1942, Heather Sinclair, University of Texas at El Paso
“The Mexican Is a Good Spender”: Labor, Leisure, and Consumption in California’s Imperial Valley, 1942–1964, Alina Méndez, University of California, San Diego
10:50 am – 12:20 pm
Queer Archives in the “Show Me” State
Chair: Holly Baggett, Missouri State University
Panelists:
Anne Baker, Missouri State University
Stuart Hinds, University of Missouri–Kansas City
Sharon Smith, Missouri History Museum Library
Steven Brawley, Independent Scholar
Sex, Religion, and Outlaw Teachers: Taboo Topics in the History of American Education
Chair and Commentator: Zoe Burkholder, Montclair State University
Wrongs, Not Rights: American Sex Education in a Global Perspective, Jonathan Zimmerman, New York University
Scopes at Ninety: The Long History of Battles over the Teaching of Evolution in American Biology Classrooms, James Fraser, New York University
Irrational Prejudice: Gay Teachers and the Supreme Court, 1974–1985, Karen Graves, Denison University
11:00 am – 2:00 pm
Walking tour: “The Queer History of St. Louis’s Central West End”
1:50 pm – 3:20 pm
Sex, Fitness, and Self-Control: Racial Hierarchies in U.S. Public Health Histories (1890-1995)
Chair and Commentator: Victoria W. Wolcott, University at Buffalo, SUNY
The 1919 Chicago Commission on Race Relations’ Commentary on Sex, Swimming, and the Racial Divide, Elizabeth Schlabach, Earlham College
Bad Blood” and “Good Doctors”: Warnings from the U.S. Public Health Service to African-Americans during WWII, Jamie Wagman, Saint Mary’s College
The Strange Career of Jiu-Jitsu: Race, Civilization, and Martial Arts in Turn-of- the-Century American Culture, Robert Haulton, University of South Carolina
“Will This Faggot Be Tossed Into the Fire?”: The Politics of the HIV/AIDS Crisis in Black Communities, 1980–1995, Elizabeth Sherouse, University of South Carolina
Sunday, April 19
9:00 am – 10:30 am
Religious and Reproductive Politics in the United States Since WWII
Chair: Sara Dubow, Williams College
Commentators: Sara Dubow, Williams College; Rebecca Davis, University of Delaware
God Bless the Pill? Religion, Oral Contraception, and American Sexuality, 1960–1980, Samira Mehta, American Council of Learned Societies/Museum of Jewish Heritage
Jewish Women’s Organizations and the Politics of Reproduction, 1970–1992, Rachel Kranson, University of Pittsburgh
Reproductive Rights, Faith, and the Clergy Consultation Service, 1967–1973, Gillian Frank, Princeton University
10:45 am – 12:15 pm
Marriage on the Margins: Contested Romance and the Limits of Spousal Legitimacy
Chair: Renee Romano, Oberlin College
Commentator: Elizabeth H. Pleck, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The Taboo on Cousin Marriage in the History of America and in American History, Susan McKinnon, University of Virginia
Social Reformers and the Racialization of American Child Marriage at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Nicholas Syrett, University of Northern Colorado
I Am My Own Stepfather: Stepparent-Stepchild Marriage in American Law and Media, 1890–1920, William Kuby, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
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