Letter from Paisley Currah
Outgoing Executive Director

"Unzipping the Monster Dick.” I thought nothing of this title when planning the fall 2003 CLAGS and a speaker, Santiago Solis, suggested it. It seemed to me, a denizen of the world of queer studies, unremarkable, even normal as I jotted it down. Solis, who was finishing his PhD in Learning Dis/abilities at Teachers College, Columbia University at the time, had the requisite explanatory subtitle: “Deconstructing Ableist Penile Representations in two Ethnic Homoerotic Magazines.”

The CLAGS fall calendar came out a short time later, and I got a call from a senior administrator at the Graduate Center. Even more senior administrators were concerned, he told me, that “Monster Dick” might attract the attention of the tabloids and the enmity of the organized right wing in the state. The previous year, Governor Pataki had appointed a conservative priest, described as an “outspoken foe” of gay rights, to the CUNY Board of Trustees. The administration, he continued, would like CLAGS to change the title, tone it down, make it less raunchy. (The administrators involved are no longer at the Graduate Center.)

We didn’t change the title.

The talk, which was part of CLAGS’s ground-breaking year-long series, “Claiming Disability: New Work at the Intersection of LGTBQ and Disability Studies,” did not go off without controversy. In fact, that colloquium was one of the most harrowing of my moderating experiences at CLAGS. While the title did not draw unwanted attention from the tabloids, it did attract two men attending their very first CLAGS event. While they seemed receptive to the slides of the massive members, they took issue with the speaker’s disability studies critique of gay porn. The low point came during the Q & A, when one of them yelled, “You’re telling me I’m supposed to jack off to pictures of men with Down’s Syndrome?” Other audience members jumped in to defend the speaker—it was his very first academic talk—and the battle was joined.

I can’t even begin to sum up all that’s happened during my four years as CLAGS ED, but I tell this story to give some sense of the challenges, the provocations, and the messiness that define the organization for me. I’m sure most longtime CLAGS members, and perhaps even newer ones, can recount other moments of intense dialogue (shouting matches). That’s what happens when new research troubles established truths (even gay ones), when intellectual and community norms collide, when canons collapse and new theories, practices, peoples take shape. The inquiry we support does not give easy answers, or carefully rehash safe academic orthodoxies. Happenings at CLAGS usually raise questions, eyebrows, and voices.

A final letter from an outgoing executive director should be crammed with lists of achievements, thanks, and suggestions for future directions. Now that I’ve used up much of my word count on the monster dick story, let me give you a very abbreviated version of the traditional form.

There really is no need to recount our achievements here—just peruse our online archives and past issues of CLAGSnews to see all that CLAGS has done. Raising money, though, is hard, behind-the-scenes work. During my time at CLAGS, I had the great fortune of working with the talented Sara Ganter, CLAGS’s Director of Development, who helped CLAGS raise over $1.3 million in grants and donations, including a new grant of $361,000 from the Ford Foundation to support the next stages of the International Resource Network. Sara, who left CLAGS last spring after the birth of a second child, will be sorely missed.

As for thanks, it was truly a pleasure to work with the graduate students who comprise the CLAGS staff. They are all devoted, smart, and fun. The Board of Directors does much of the work that staff at other organizations do, from programming events to reading fellowship applications, and I was lucky to have the opportunity to work with an exceptionally hard-working and engaged board during my four years. I am also grateful for the mentoring offered to me by all the former executive directors of CLAGS: Martin Duberman, Jill Dolan, and Alisa Solomon.

There is no need to chart out, or even hint at, CLAGS’s future here. I’m leaving CLAGS in exceptionally strong hands. Sarah Chinn, an Associate Professor of English at Hunter College whose work explores questions of race, sexuality, and gender in U.S. literature, is going to be a superb executive director. She has incredible enthusiasm and energy, extensive knowledge of the field, and a real desire to strengthen queer studies within CUNY and beyond.

When politicians leave office, they often say they look forward to “spending more time with their family.” For academics stepping down from administrative posts, one can’t wait to “get back to teaching and writing.” I’m not only leaving CLAGS with a handful of unfinished research projects simmering on my desk, I’m also absconding with a board member, and now find myself in the midst of a family. So, to close my “treasurer’s report” with a double-dose platitude—I will miss CLAGS, but I truly am looking forward to having more time for family life, and to getting back to my writing.

Letter from Sarah E. Chinn
Incoming Executive Director

I’m not the kind of person who procrastinates – I’d rather do something right away than worry and further feed the procrastination. But I have been putting off writing this inaugural column as the new executive director of CLAGS. The challenge, I think, has been where to begin: taking on a position that has been so magnificently filled by Paisley Currah, Alisa Solomon, Jill Dolan, and Martin Duberman is already such a challenge that contemplating actually writing about it seems even more insuperable.

And introductions are hard. How much should I say about myself? How much about my plans for CLAGS? Luckily I didn’t need to polish my writing skills for that defining modern genre, the personals ad, or have to introduce myself to hundreds of people I don’t know, one by one (“Hi, I’m Sarah. I’m a Scorpio. Turn-ons: queer theory, foundation grants, offices with windows. Turn-offs: homophobia, fluorescent lighting, inadequate state funding”). The obstacle here, of course, is the same as the reward for taking over this intimidating position: the thrill of the unknown; privilege of stewarding an organization as it grows and flourishes; the desire to deepen our strengths and remedy our weakenesses.

CLAGS has achieved dizzying heights in the past fifiteen years, sponsoring any number of groundbreaking events, rewarding exceptional queer scholarship, honoring our most distinguished scholars, developing innovative new projects. Paisley’s work with the International Resource Network (IRN) is a telling legacy to his time as Executive Director of CLAGS, uniting queer scholars from around the world who can share their work and interests in a multiplicity of languages, both in person and online. The breadth and ambition of this project is mind-boggling, and I only hope that I leave as remarkable an imprint on CLAGS and on queer scholarship as Paisley has done with his involvement with the IRN.

CLAGS is a hybrid creature, part of the CUNY Graduate Center but also larger in scope, national and international. This hybridity is one of its great strengths. A project that is still in its nascent stage, a website dealing with queer histories, is a perfect example of this. It’s our hope that this website will provide a portal to the queer past for students, teachers, scholars, and casual visitors, built on a broad and deep archive of images, documents, scholarly work, and offer a forum for users to share their thoughts and their individual histories. Although still in its early days, this website promises to be an exciting addition to the roster of CLAGS projects, one that, like so much of CLAGS’ work, combines academic rigor with grassroots involvement.

At the same time that we’re planning this ambitious website, I’m also committed to cementing CLAGS’ place in the CUNY system, as a facilitator of queer scholarship throughout CUNY. Much as the IRN connects LGBTQ intellectuals throughout the world, I’d like to see CLAGS connect queer scholars within CUNY. I would like to compile a list of queer studies course offerings across the CUNY system, set up discussions among faculty working in LGBTI research, and create networks between students at different CUNY campuses to bolster the wonderful work done by the Queer CUNY conference. I’d love to see a directory of all faculty doing work in queer studies at CUNY and of courses offered at CUNY campuses, for example. The City University is a magnificent resource and a nexus of all kinds of queer subjectivities and areas of inquiry – it would be thrilling to see CLAGS play a significant role in that maelstrom of activity, activism, and scholarship.

And I know I won’t be alone in this work. The commitment and energy of the CLAGS board, the hard work and creativity of the staff, and the ongoing connection and contributions of our members are, after all, what CLAGS is. Executive Directors may come and go, but the amazing, provocative, groundbreaking work that CLAGS does remains the same, even as it is continually changing.