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ABOUT CLAGS
  Mission
Directions & Hours
Executive Director
Founder
Board of Directors
Staff
Committees
Advisory Board
Supporters


Mission

The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) was founded in 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 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals and communities. By sponsoring public programs and conferences, offering fellowships to individual scholars, and functioning as an indispensable conduit of information, CLAGS serves as a national center for the promotion of scholarship that fosters social change.


Directions & Hours

CLAGS is located in room 7115 of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue between 34th/35th Streets.

The Graduate Center is easy walking distance from these subway lines:
B,D,F,V,N,Q,R,W at 34th St/Herald Square
1,2,3 at 34th St
6 at 33rd St.

CLAGS is generally open Mon-Fri from 11am-5pm. If you are making a special trip, we recommend calling ahead: 212.817.1955.

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Executive Director:

Sarah E. Chinn is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Hunter College. She is the author of Technology and the Logic of American Racism: A Cultural History of the Body as Evidence (2000), and New Americans, New Identities: The Children of Immigrants and the Invention of Modern Adolescence, 1885-1930 (forthcoming, Rutgers University Press). She has also published numerous articles in American Studies, Queer Studies, and Disability Studies, including "Feeling Her Way: Audre Lorde and the Power of Touch," and "'Something Primitive and Age-Old as Nature Herself': Lesbian Sexuality and the Permission of the Exotic."

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Founder:

Martin Duberman is Distinguished Professor of History at Lehman College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and the founder and first Director (1986-96) of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies. One of the country's foremost historians, he is the author of 19 books and numerous articles and essays. He won the Bancroft Prize for Charles Francis Adams; two Lambda awards for Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, an anthology he co-edited; and a special award from the National Academy of Arts and Letters for his "contributions to literature." His play, In White America, won the Vernon Rice/Drama Desk Award. His most current play, Visions of Kerouac, will be produced in May 2003 at the Marin Theater Company. His other works include James Russell Lowell, Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community, Paul Robeson, Cures: A Gay Man's Odyssey, and Stonewall. He just completed a novel, Haymarket and has recently begun a biography of Lincoln Kirstein.

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Board of Directors, 2006-2007:

Deborah P. Amory is Dean and Director of the Central New York Center of Empire State College, SUNY. She has presented on gay globalization using her research on a group of urban gay kuchu men in Kenya in CLAGS's colloquium series (see CLAGSNews Summer 2000 issue for a report). She developed with CLAGS board member Esther Newton an on-line version of CLAGS's Seminars in the City discussion group.

Luis E. Cárcamo-Huechante is an Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. His research interests are: intersections between literary, cultural, and economic discourses in modern Latin America; issues of gender, sexuality, and culture; cultural theory and critique in the Americas; Latin American poetry and poetic thought of all periods. He is currently working on his book project on the trope of the market in economic, literary and cultural discourses in late twentieth-century Chilean society. Current initiative: a South American Symposium on Sexuality, Gender and Culture.

Kimberly Christensen is Associate Professor of Economics and Women's Studies at SUNY/Purchase, and is the recipient of the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Distinguished Teaching. Her research focuses on the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality in public policy; e.g., labor market discrimination, welfare "reform," and current proposals for reform of the electoral/campaign finance system. She has been involved in the peace, AIDS, and disability rights movements, among other political activities, for many years.

Carlos Ulises Decena is Assistant Professor in the Departments of Women's and Gender Studies and Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

Rafael de la Dehesa is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work at the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York.  His current research focuses on LGBT social movement activism in Latin America and on how political parties in the region have taken up the debates on sexuality.

Carolyn Dinshaw (on leave 2006) is the founding Director of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at NYU, where she is also Professor of English.  A medievalist by training, she wrote the first full-length feminist book on Chaucer, Chaucer's Sexual Poetics (1989), followed by Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern (1999).  Her current research concerns late medieval mysticism and queerness.  With David M. Halperin, she is founding co-editor of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, published by Duke University Press.

Jack Drescher, M.D., is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the William Alanson White Institute, and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association (APA).  He is Chair of the APA's Committee on Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Issues and a founding member of the Group for Advancement of Psychiatry's Commitee on Sexual Minorities.  He is the author of Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man (The Analytic Press, 1998), editor of The Analytic Press's "Bending Psychoanalysis" book series and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy.  Dr. Drescher is in private practice in New York City.

Thomas Glave is the author of Whose Song? and Other Stories (City Lights), a collection of essays, Words To Our Now: Imagination and Dissent (Minnesota; winner of a 2005 Lambda Literary Award), the forthcoming The Torturer's Wife (fiction; City Lights), and editor of the forthcoming anthology Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles(Duke, 2008).  A founding member of the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals, and Gays (J-FLAG), he is an associate professor of English at SUNY Binghamton. 

Yukiko Hanawa teaches in the Department of East Asian Studies at New York University.

Richard Kim is a Ph.D. candidate in the American Studies program at New York University.  His dissertation on sexuality and 19th century American travel writing is titled "Fellow Travelers: Homoeroticism, Orientalism and American Empire."  He has taught at NYU's Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality and in the Film and Media department at Hunter College.  He writes frequently on sexual politics, AIDS and popular culture for The Nation magazine and other publications, and is on the board of directors of Queers for Economic Justice.

Karin Kohlmeier is a student in the PhD program in English at CUNY and teaches English at City College.  She has been appointed by QUNY, the Graduate Center's queer student organization, to serve as a student representative on the CLAGS board.  Before coming to CUNY, Karin received her Masters in Humanities and Social Thought from NYU.  Along with GLBTQ studies, her research interests include autobiography, immigration narratives, and Victorian literature.

Don Kulick received his PhD from Stockholm University in Sweden, and currently works in Anthropology at New York University. He recently conducted fieldwork among transgender Brazilian prostitutes in Milan, Italy for his study, "Heterosexuality: An Ethnographic Approach," and is currently working on two book manuscripts, Language and Sexuality (with Deborah Cameron) and Good Sex: Sexuality & Nation in Sweden.

Christian John Lillis is the director of major gifts for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, where he oversees the Task Force’s ambitious Leadership Council program and provides staff support to the organization’s board of directors fundraising efforts. He joined to the Task Force in June 2005, after four years at NYU Medical Center, where he was most recently Associate Director of Development. He is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement (APRA) of Greater New York, where he served as Education Services Director and Program Director. He is a frequent speaker at local and regional conventions, including the Mid-Atlantic Researchers Conference (2003, 2004 and 2005), APRA of Greater New York meetings and New Jersey Fundraising Day.

Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel is Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania. She has previously taught at Rutgers University, Princeton University, and at the University of Puerto Rico.  Her research focuses on Latin(o) American Literature, particularly in  Colonial, Hispanic Caribbean and Latino Narrative and Poetry.  Her courses cover topics ranging from Cultural Representations of Hispanic Caribbean Migrations to the Invention of a Colonial Discourse in the Américas.  In the fall of 2000, she presented "Families of Desire: Migration and Sexuality in New York's Caribbean Enclaves" for CLAGS's Colloquium Series.  She has published two books, Saberes americanos: subalternidad y epistemología en los escritos de Sor Juana (Iberoamericana, 1999), and Caribe Two Ways: cultura de la migracíon en el Caribe insular hispánico (Callejón, 2003), and a compilation of essays, co-edited with Mabel Moraña, Nictimene ...sacrílega.  Estudios coloniales en homenaje a Georgina Sabat-Rivers (Claustro de Sor Juana and Iberoamericana, 2003).

Lisa Jean Moore has been a part of the CUNY system since 1998 and teaches courses such as The Sociology of Women, The Sociology of Men, Birth and Death and The Sociology of the Body.  She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work at CUNY's College of Staten Island and the Graduate Center.  Previously she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies in San Francisco, and she served as the President of the Board of the Sperm Bank of California.  Her publications include research on human genital anatomy, semen, sperm banks, and male hierarchies.

Ananya Mukherjea is an Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and Sociology at the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York. Her main area of research is the social politics of infectious disease pandemics, especially the global history of HIV/AIDS. She’s also interested in urban public health, more generally, and in feminist pedagogy. Ananya worked as an HIV/AIDS educator and advocate and as an anti-prison proliferation activist for several years. She is currently involved with the many folks working to keep CUNY free and vibrant and at the forefront of public education.

Colin Robinson is Executive Director of the New York State Black Gay Network.  A Trinidadian immigrant, Robinson's work in the U.S. has focused on building organizations (especially LGBT immigrant and people of color communities), HIV and transnational policy issues, and cultural production.  He created the 2003 publication "Think Again," was New York field producer for the film "Tongues Untied," an early editor and key administrator for the serial "Other Countries: Black Gay Voices," and has played leadership and founding roles in the Audre Lorde Project, Caribbean Pride, Gay Men of African Descent and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.  His past CLAGS work includes planning the 1995 Black Nations/Queer Nations conference and service as a Rockefeller Fellowship juror.

Joe Rollins (on leave 2006) is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Queens College.

David Serlin is an Associate Professor of Communication and Science Studies and an Affiliated Faculty in Critical Gender Studies at the University of California, San Diego.  He is the author of Replaceable You: Engineering the Body in Postwar America (2004) and a co-editor of Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics (2002), and Policing Public Sex: Queer Politics and the Future of AIDS Activism (1996).  He serves as a historical consultant for the National Institutes of Health and as a member of  the Radical History Review's editorial collective.

Ben. Sifuentes Jáuregui is Associate Professor of American Studies and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University.  He is the author of Transvestism, Masculinity, and Latin American Literature: Genders Share Flesh (Palgrave 2002).  His recent work looks at Latin American melodrama and the structure of masochism, and queer Latin(o) American identities.  He has also taught courses on  Latino/a literatures and post-colonial theory, psychoanalytic theory, and sexuality.

Dean Spade is a trans activist and attorney who founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) in August of 2002.  SRLP is a collective organization, providing free legal services to low-income people and people of color facing gender identity discrimination.  Dean was the recipient of the Emil J. Stache Public Interest Law Fellowship at UCLA for the years of 1998-2001, when he received his J.D. He is currently a Law Teaching Fellow of Williams Institute at UCLA Law School. His writing has appeared in the Chicano-Latino Law Review, the Harvard Lesbian and Gay Review, and the Berkeley Women's Law Journal.  Dean is also co-editor of the online journal Makezine.org.

Polly Thistlethwaite is an Associate Professor and Associate Librarian for Public Services at the CUNY Graduate Center.  She has worked extensively with the Lesbian Herstory Archives, and she was recently awarded a PSC/CUNY Research Grant to study GLBT public history in Berlin.

Saadia Toor is at the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work at the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York.
 

Brenda Vollman is a student in the Criminal Justice PhD program of the Graduate Center, at John Jay College. S/he has been appointed by QUNY, the Graduate Center's queer student organization, to serve as a student representative on the CLAGS board. Brenda has earned a Bachelor of Arts in Gender Studies, with a concentration in the African Diaspora, from the Ohio State University(1995). S/he moved to New York City to attend City College, receiving a Masters in Sociology (2000).  Brenda is  on the Steering Committee of the Doctoral Student Council, and is an active intra-program representative. S/he is currently an adjunct in the Sociology Department at John Jay College, teaching courses ranging from Introduction to Sociological Perspectives, Social Problems, Race and Ethnic Relations  and Feminist Criminology. Brenda’s research interests are  structured around the ways in which race, class, gender, and sexuality influence perceptions  and constructions of violence and victimization (particularly sexual violence), and the ways in which social control policies are created and enforced as a result.  

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Staff:

Any of the staff members below can be contacted at clags@gc.cuny.edu. For fastest response, include the individual's name in the subject line.

Naveed Alam is the Events and Outreach Coordinator and edits CLAGSNews. He teaches English at John Jay College. His first collection of poems, A Queen of No Ordinary Realms, won the Spokane Poetry Prize and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous magazines including Prairie Shooner, Poetry International, International Poetry Review, The American Poetry Journal, The Marlboro Review, and The Seattle Review.

Preston Bautista is CLAGS's graphic designer. He is a doctoral candidate in Art History at the Graduate Center, CUNY. While writing his dissertation, he is also working as a Program Assistant at the Getty Foundation.

Naz is the Development Director at CLAGS. She is pursuing a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology, and is particularly interested in transnational feminism, immigrant rights, and race in post-9/11 America.

Alyssa Nitchun is the Membership and Fellowships Coordinator at CLAGS. She loves dressing up, queer theory, subcultural archives, and exploring performativity. In pursuit of such things, Alyssa is a freelance writer on art, fashion, theatre, and music, and an ongoing contributor to downtown NY archives and a DJ. Alyssa holds an MA in Humanities and Social Thought with an emphasis in Gender Politics from NYU.

Nomvuyo Nolutshungu is a graduate student at the CUNY Graduate Center pursing a Ph.D in political science. Her interests include human rights and international norms, contemporary political theory, and globalization studies. Nolutshungu has worked at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, Security Council Report, and has been an instructor at Hunter, John Jay and Baruch Colleges.

Sara Pursley is webmaster at CLAGS and a doctoral candidate in history at the Graduate Center. She has written about lesbian/gay/queer politics and U.S. foreign policy for Gay City News, WorkingforChange.com, Salon.com and The Nation.

Jasmina Sinanovic is financial and administrative manager at CLAGS. She teaches at the Communications Department at the Bronx Community College and Women Studies Department at the City College by day and is a performance/burlesque/theatre artist by night. Her research interests are in queer, performance and postcolonial theory as well as the study of the idea of Balkanism. She holds an MFA in Dramaturgy from Stony Brook University.

Lynley Wheaton is the Project Coordinator for CLAGS’ OutHistory.org project. She is currently a student in Information and Library Science at Pratt Institute. Her areas of interest include archives, digital libraries, and queer theory.

Chun-Ping Yen is a Project Coordinator of the International Resource Network. She is a student in the Doctoral Program in Philosophy at the Graduate Center, CUNY and the Director of Scholastic Programs at the Institute for Tongzhi Studies.

 

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More About CLAGS:

Committees
Advisory Board
Supporters

 

  The Graduate Center . City University of New York . Room 7.115 . 365 Fifth Avenue . New York, NY 10016 . 212.817.1955 . clags@gc.cuny.edu