George Chauncey (NHC Fellow, 1996–97)

Fellowship Work Summary, 1996–97

George Chauncey spent the year working on his forthcoming book, The Strange Career of the Closet: Gay Culture, Consciousness, and Politics from the Second World War to the Stonewall Era. He also made progress on two articles related to this project: "Gender, Sexual Practice, and Homosexual Consciousness in Twentieth-Century America" for Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales and "Why 'Come Out of the Closet'?: Authenticity, The Counterculture, and the Shifting Boundaries of the Public and Private Self in the 1950s and '60s." He completed several essays, including "Sex, Gender, and Sexuality: Female Prostitution and Male Homosexuality in Early Twentieth-Century America" for Groupes de Recherches Anglo-Americaine de Tours (1997); "Rethinking the Third Sex" for Lesbian and Gay History: Defining a Field, edited by Lawrence Kissak; and "The Queer History and Politics of Lesbian and Gay Studies" for Queer Frontiers, edited by Joseph Boone. He submitted several short pieces and reviews to The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Out, and Dissent.