An essential anthology of leading academics, activists, and artists on the state of queer studies today.

Founded in 1992, the David R. Kessler lectures represent the foreground of queer studies in the US, featuring legendary thinkers such as Cherríe Moraga, Samuel Delaney, Barbara Smith, Judith Butler, and more. Queer Then and Now collects the speeches given from 2002 to 2020, as well as two scholarly roundtables, by some of the most influential scholars, artists, and activists of the last two decades, including Gayle Rubin, Cathy J. Cohen, Dean Spade, Sara Ahmed, Jasbir K. Puar, and the late Douglas Crimp and Adrienne Rich.

Diverse and dynamic, these intertextual conversations tackle some of today’s most important interventions from the margins—including the growth of trans studies, the synergy and disconnect between theory and activism, the role of LGBTQ+ art and media, the challenge of transnational and postcolonial theory, and more. Tracing the maturation of queer studies after its foundation in the 1990s, Queer Then and Now lays the groundwork in the twenty-first century and beyond.

The Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS), located at the City University of New York, Graduate Center, was founded in 1991 and is the first university-based research center in the United States dedicated to the study of historical, cultural, and political issues of vital concern to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals and communities.

Debanuj DasGupta is assistant professor of feminist studies at University of California at Santa Barbara. Debanuj’s research and teaching focuses on racialized regulation of space, immigration detention, queer migrations and the global governance of migration, sexuality, and HIV.

Joseph Donica is associate professor of English at Bronx Community College, CUNY. His research and teaching focus on Arab-American literature, urban studies, the history of technology, the legal and ethical framework of US citizenship, and queer diasporic literatures of the Middle East and North Africa.

Margot Weiss is associate professor of American studies and anthropology at Wesleyan University, where she established and directs the cluster in Queer Studies and is affiliated with Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her research and teaching focuses on the relationship between queer sexual cultures and US neoliberal capitalism.

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Queer Ideas, Messy Archives, and the Then and Now of Queer Studies

Chapter 1: 2002: Jonathan Ned Katz, Making Sex History: Obsessions of a Quarter Century

Chapter 2: 2003: Gayle Rubin, Geologies of Queer Studies: It’s Déjà Vu All Over Again

Chapter 3: 2004: Isaac Julien, Cinematic Rearticulations

Chapter 4: 2005: Carole Vance, Travels With Sex

Chapter 5: 2006: Adrienne Rich, Candidates for my Love: Three Gay and Lesbian Poets

Chapter 6: 2007: Douglas Crimp, Action Around the Edges

Chapter 7: 2008: Susan Stryker, Ghost Dances: A Trans-movement Manifesto

Chapter 8: 2009: Sarah Schulman, Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences

Chapter 9: 2010: Urvashi Vaid, What Can Brown Do For You?: Race, Sexuality and the Future of LGBT Politics

Chapter 10: Queer Then and Now Roundtable: Histories of Queer and Trans Activism

Chapter 11: 2012: Martin Duberman, Acceptance at What Price?: The Gay Movement Reconsidered

Chapter 12: 2013: Cheryl Clarke, Queer Black Trouble: In Life, Literature, and the Age of Obama

Chapter 13: 2014: Cathy J. Cohen, #DoBlackLivesMatter? From Michael Brown to CeCe McDonald

Chapter 14: 2015: Richard Fung, Re-Orientations: Shift and continuities in Asian Canadian queer and trans identities and activism

Chapter 15: 2016: Dean Spade, When We Win We Lose: Mainstreaming and the Redistribution of Respectability

Chapter 16: 2017: Sara Ahmed, Queer Use 2

Chapter 17: 2018: Amber Hollibaugh, Hope and the Power of Desire: Our Vision for Changing the World

Chapter 18: 2019: Jasbir Puar, A No-State “Solution”: Inter/nationalism and the Question of Queer Theory

Chapter 19: 2020: Roderick Ferguson, Queer and Trans Liberation and the Critique of Fascism, or when S.T.A.R. Met Césaire and the Frankfurt School

Chapter 20: Queer Then and Now Roundtable: Histories of Queer and Trans Scholarship