SEARCH   THEN, NOW, AND TOMORROW     The 1990s find lesbians and gays in a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, we are experiencing greater visibility and greater tolerance than ever before. On the other hand, we continue to find ourselves at the center of a national debate where our adversaries depict us as the epitome of all that is morally wrong with America. The rhetoric of our opponents recalls the dark days when most discourse equated homosexuality with mental illness and perversion. People coming of age in the 1990s must sort through a maelstrom of conflicting information about lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered people. As we seek to define ourselves, we must face loud, often cantankerous, frequently pernicious public debate about the meaning of lesbian and gay lives. Only recently have pioneering scholars, both inside and outside universities, forged a crucial new field of inquiry - Lesbian and Gay Studies. Their work has forced disciplines ranging from anthropology to literature, biology to art history, to reassess their theoretical and political grounding, and to consider sexuality and sexual diversity as critical facts determining social behaviors and structures. Why is this important? Because it affects the way our society thinks about and responds to lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgendered people, and to the issues that concern them. The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) was the first university-based research center dedicated to encouraging this new critical field. The idea for the center was born in May 1986 in the living room of internationally acclaimed scholar Martin Duberman. Duberman worked tirelessly for many years to convince many universities of the necessity of establishing a program that fostered research and scholarship about lesbian and gay lives and social institutions, as well as about homophobia and oppression. CLAGS found its official home five years later, in 1991, at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School. CLAGS serves a singular function for the lesbian and gay community by fostering scholarship that promotes self-knowledge and self-discovery. As members of our community look for answers to difficult questions, CLAGS provides the vehicle for thoughtful analysis. The center sees its primary mission as bringing together eminent scholars, activists, artists and writers to chart new territory in lesbian and gay studies, and to bring this groundbreaking work to the attention of the larger community. Since 1991, the center has sponsored such challenging programs as "Lesbian and Gay History: Defining a Field," "Homosexuality and Hollywood," "Homo Economics: Market and Community in Lesbian and Gay Life," "Great Dykes in American Literature: Literary Biography and Autobiography," and "Black Nations/Queer Nations: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities in the African Diaspora." CLAGS also sponsors the annual David R. Kessler Lecture in Lesbian and Gay Studies. Past lecturers include Joan Nestle, Edmund White, Barbara Herrenstein Smith, Monique Wittig, Esther Newton, and Samuel Delany. The center also sponsors a monthly colloquia series‹an informal gathering of scholars and students who meet to hear and discuss works in progress. Speakers at past colloquia have included Alan Berubé, David Roman, Ruthann Robson, Sharon Thompson, and Wayne Koestenbaum. Many speakers have later published the works read here as books. Last year, we entered into a publishing agreement with New York University Press for a series of books, the first two edited by our founder and member emeritus, Martin Duberman: A Queer World: The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, and Queer Representations: Reading Lives, Reading Cultures. Both appeared in early 1997, and collect some of the many conference papers, panel discussions, lectures, and colloquia sponsored by CLAGS since 1991. Two further volumes will collect the proceedings of two major CLAGS conferences, "Sissies and Tomboys: Gender 'Nonconformity' and Homosexuality," and "Queer Theater: A Conference with Performances." In addition to its public programs and colloquia, CLAGS offers financial support to scholars working in lesbian and gay studies. Each year, CLAGS gives scholars more than $85,000 in fellowships and awards, including two Rockefeller Residency Fellowships in the Humanities. The other awards range from $500 Scholarly Grants-in-Aid for CUNY graduate students, to the Ken Dawson Award and the Constance Jordan Award ($5,000 and $4,000 respectively) for lesbian and gay work with historical content. In the future, we hope to add to this list of fellowships and awards that assist students and scholars working and studying in the field. The future looks bright. CLAGS is sponsoring and producing more ambitious events, enlarging its purview to include international lesbian and gay concerns, and soon hopes to extend its residency fellowships to scholars from other countries. This will allow us to create an international network of scholars and activists working toward securing freedoms for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered people worldwide. We hope many of you reading this will join our ambitious, ongoing mission.             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