After Marriage Equality in Ireland
Thurs, Feb 11 | CUNY Graduate Center | Room 9207
7:00pm-9:00pm

The recent marriage equality referendum in Ireland was a historic event and is what could be the first of many countries throughout Europe who pass marriage equality through a vote. CLAGS, in partnership with the Queens College Irish Studies Program, will be the first to host speaker Quentin Fottrell, an Irish member of the LGBT community and a journalist for the Wall Street Journal to convey the background, buildup and aftermath of the vote in the historically Catholic country. Q&A and Discussion revolving around the referendum, history of LGBT exclusion at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade and about the future implications for marriage equality across all of Europe.
Audre Lorde Birthday Celebration & Anthology Party
Thurs, Feb 18 | Hunter College Kay Playhouse | 695 Park Avenue
6:30pm – 10:00pm

This year, Audre Lorde’s birthday will also celebrate the release of The Wind Is Spirit: The Life, Love and Legacy of Audre Lorde, an anthology of writings by people who knew Audre Lorde, edited by her partner Dr. Gloria I. Joseph and Linda Villarosa. Join us for a night of celebration, poetry, musical performances, a slide show, of and tribute to Audre’s unparalleled contribution to human rights.
Queer People of Color and Gentrification in New York City
Thurs, Feb. 25 | CUNY Graduate Center | Room C198
7:00pm-9:00pm

What is the state of Queer of Color lives in this time of unconstrained displacement? What new and/or traditional political forms are thriving in this era of precarity? This set of talks seeks not answers, but dialogue on the place and potential of QPOC perspectives and experiences on New York City in local and global context In a world of endless war,statelessness/homelessness as a prevailing reality, and the domestic exploitation of people of color in electoral politics, we also see the rising of Black Lives Matter, The Dream Defenders and Solidarity with Palestine, joined increasingly by student movements focused on both inclusion and transformation. We organize these events to call into question the mediating role of New York City itself, as a site of silenced histories and of unprecedented expressions of nostalgia, of futurity and potential.
CLAGS 25th Anniversary Conference
Fri, March 4 | CUNY Graduate Center | Elebash Hall
9:00am-6:00pm

CLAGS was founded at CUNY in April 1991 as the first university-based research center in the United States dedicated to the study of historical, cultural, and political issues of vital concern to LGBTQ lives. Our 25th Anniversary celebration is a one-day interdisciplinary conference will reflect on the past, present, and future of queer studies. Keynote speaker is CLAGS Founder Martin Duberman. Other panels will feature Jill Dolan, Paisley Currah, Alisa Solomon, Sarah Chinn, Kevin Nadal, Darnell Moore, Jonathan Ned Katz, Yoruba Richen, Tucker Pamella Farley, Jose Quiroga, Carmen Vasquez, andré carrington, Andrew Spieldenner, Marta Esquilin, David Rivera, and more.
What is Sex For? With David Halperin
Fri, March 18 | City College CUNY | NAC Ballroom (160 Convent Avenue)
5:00pm-7:00pm

David Halperin is professor of the history and theory of sexuality at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. This lecture examines if sex have any erotic purpose? The greatest philosophers of classical antiquity said no. Halperin examines arguments which offer a serious challenge to modern interpretations of love, including but not limited to psychoanalytic interpretations, that understand love in sexual terms and that view all erotic desire as an expression of sexuality. Halperin argues that some contemporary gay male writing represents a singular effort to work through the confusions and the anguish that the modern sexualization of erotic desire has bequeathed to us. A reception will follow shortly after his talk.
Shifting the Stigma of HIV/AIDS
Mon, March 21 | CUNY Graduate Center | Room C205
6:30pm-8:30pm

Steven Thrasher (Contributing Editor of Buzzfeed and Journalist), Linda Villarosa (Author, Former Editor at the New York Times and Program Director for The Division of Humanities and the Arts at The City College of New York) , and Viviane Namaste (Concordia University Research Chair in HIV/AIDS) discuss the stigma surrounding HIV and AIDS in a panel moderated by Ian Bradley Perrin (HIV/AIDS Activist, Advocate, and Policy Analyst).

Ka-Man Tse & Carl Sylvestre: Narrow Distances
Tues, March 22 | CUNY Graduate Center | Room C205
6:30pm-8:30pm

Ka-Man Tse, the 2014-2015 Robert Giard Fellow, will present her recent work, Narrow Distances, a series of photographs made within the LGBTQ community in Hong Kong between 2014-2015. She will also screen her video Gahp Song, an ongoing participatory video project that is about food as language, memory, intimacy, trust and play. Filmed over the course of six years, the meals take place in public places and private homes throughout New York, California, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. (running time of video, 20 minutes)

Sci-Fi Alien(ation): Diversity Under Attack, Racism, Homophobia, & Sexism at Hugo Awards & Beyond
Fri, April 8 | IRIDAC | TBA

A panel discussion of scholars and science fiction authors including andré carrington, Jennifer Marie Brissett, Craig Laurance Gidney discuss racism, homophobia, and sexism in the world of sci-fi publishing and fandom in general, and the highly-publicized hate campaign at the 2015 Hugo Awards. A group calling itself the “Sad Puppies” gamed the voting system to assure that most award nominees were white, male, and straight, voicing public statements about gay, black, and women’s themes and authors ruining the genre. Many non-white, queer, and women authors have received rape threats and death threats in association with this campaign. This episode mirrors “gamer-gate,” where similar rape and death threats against women in the video game industry who have complained about sexism.

The Rainbow Book Fair
Sat, April 9 | John Jay College, CUNY | 2nd floor Student Dining Hall
12:00pm-6:00pm
The New York Rainbow Book Fair is America’s oldest LGBT book fair and the largest LGBT book event in the country. It has grown every year since its beginning in 2009. It brings together thoughtful, interesting people of all ages, from early teens to those in their 70s and 80s; from a spectrum of countries, ethnicities, gender identities, and viewpoints, but also publishers, editors, agents, and media attention-people who have never experienced queer culture, and others who have made it the focus of their lives.

Back to the City: A Lecture and Roundtable on Timothy Stewart-Winter’s Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics
Mon, April 18 | CUNY Graduate Center | Room 9204
7:00pm-9:00pm

In this lecture and roundtable discussion, Timothy Stewart-Winter and panelists will discuss his book Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), which argues that big-city municipal politics was central to the gay movement’s path since the 1950s, from the closets to the corridors of power while also shifting the story from the coastal meccas to the nation’s great inland metropolis. Themes will include the role of policing in LGBTQ mobilization, the gay movement’s debt to urban black politics, the politics of region and spatial scale, and the present and future of urban queer activism. Following Stewart-Winter’s mini-lecture, Thomas J. Sugrue will lead a discussion by Phil Tiemeyer, Pauline Park, Alexandra Moffett-Bateau, and members of the audience.

Gay American History @ 40: LGBTQ History Conference: Past, Present, Future
Thurs & Fri May 5-6 | The New School

We are delighted to announce a conference marking the fortieth anniversary of Jonathan Ned Katz’s Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (GAH, 1976).This conference on the anniversary of Gay American History will provide an opportunity for critical reflection on the book and on the international development of LGBTQ and heterosexual history. This conference will highlight the ways in which theories, categories, research methods and priorities have been constructed, challenged, and reconstructed over the last forty years of historical research on sexuality and gender.

CLAGS 25th Anniversary Party
Fri. May 6 | The LGBT Center of NYC | 208 W 13th St. | Room 301
7:00pm – 9:00pm

Join the CLAGS board, staff, and volunteers as we celebrate 25 years as the first university-based LGBTQ research center in the United States committed to funding cutting-edge scholarship, events, arts, and activism on queer & trans lives. Conference panelists, organizers, attendees, armchair queer history buffs, and all your lovers and friends are invited to toast to 25 more years of community and history, and support CLAGS’ continued work.