CALL FOR PAPERS
Radically Gay: The Life & Visionary Legacy of Harry Hay

September 27-30, 2012, New York City

In celebration of the centennial of the birth of LGBT pioneer Harry Hay, CLAGS (the Center for Lesbian & Gay Studies at CUNY) and the Harry Hay Centennial Committee invite proposals for a broad-reaching conference exploring key facets of LGBT life and their evolution over the last six decades.

Harry Hay's life and his impact on LGBT history and culture were extraordinary, and the range of his activities was terrifically diverse. In the 1930s and '40s, his involvement in progressive politics, avant-garde art, and the Communist Party all shaped and influenced his formulation of the idea that LGBT people were a distinct "cultural minority" who needed to become conscious of themselves as a people and organize for their own liberation. With that insight, he co-founded the Mattachine Society in the 1950s and helped launch the modern LGBT liberation movement. He was an organizer of the first Radical Faerie gathering in 1979 and remained an active participant and inspirational figure in LGBT movements until his death in 2002. In addition, as a gay activist Hay committed himself to a larger progressive agenda, working in the anti-war movement, on behalf of Native Peoples, and within Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition. As an intellectual, Hay devoted himself to anthropological and historical research about the origins and meaning of LGBT lives, social roles and consciousness. His research focused particular energy on two-spirit people among Native Americans and matrilineal cultures.

Given this rich array of interests, the conference organizers seek to gather scholars, public intellectuals, activists, students, and artists who will take inspiration from Hay's life and ideas in order to think together about several strands of LGBT living. In particular, the conference will explore four central themes inspired by and reflective of Hay's life and times: LGBT arts, political activism, spirituality and sexual identities.

We welcome proposals for full panels, individual research papers, artistic presentations, and "state of the debate" discussions. We are certainly interested in proposals about Hay's life itself and any of its many facets. At the same time, we very much encourage proposals that explore and debate how the questions raised and confronted by Hay have continued to evolve. To that end, papers may be historical, theoretical, contemporary or future-oriented and may address, but need not be limited to, any of the following thematic topics:

LGBT POLITICS:

• Significance of Mattachine and homophile political groups, their evolution, and relation to gay liberation activism
• Importance (or not) of homophile and other LGBT political leaders
• Sexuality on the Left
• LGBT radicalism and separatism vs mainstream politics and assimilation
• Coalition-building vs single-issue politics
• Youth as a political constituency
• Assessing LGBT organizing strategies and utopian goals
• Mapping an LGBT agenda for the 21st-century

LGBT SPIRITUALITY:

• Historical, cultural, and religious aspects of the Radical Faerie movement
• LGBT perspectives on religion, theology, and spirituality
• LGBT influence on, and conflicts with, mainstream and alternative religions
• Linking the spiritual and the sexual
• Politics of spirituality
• Connections to the natural world
• Queer mysticism, shamanism and spiritual practice
• Ancient roots of queer spirituality
• Native Peoples' spiritualities

LGBT ARTS:

• Harry Hay's artistic world: John Cage, Will Geer, Lester Horton, Leftist theater, etc.
• Past/present fears of LGBT artistic power (e.g. 1950s "homintern")
• Representations of LGBT lives in contemporary/historical popular culture
• Past/present uses of art as tool of LGBT political activism (e.g. Gran Fury)
• Role of folk & popular music for political organizing (e.g. People's Song)
• LGBT contributions to 20th-century avant-garde and popular arts
• Defining a queer aesthetic sensibility
• Studies of specific significant queer artists

LGBT IDENTITIES:

• The evolving identities of LGBT/Queer/Questioning/Hetero-flexible/Trans People and others
• The meaning of gender in the LGBT world
• Homophile, Gay, Queer: differences, overlaps, and relations
• Lesbians & Gay men: past/present/future alliances and cleavages
• Class and socioeconomic issues within LGBT organizing
• Transgender inclusions/exclusions
• Queer archetypes
• Meaning of "gay consciousness"
• Identity as "natural," "historical," or "learned"
• Two-spirit tradition and alternative gender roles in non-Western cultures
• The future of sexual identities

For each paper proposed, please submit a 300-word abstract and a 2-page CV for the presenter. If you wish to propose a 3 or 4 person panel, please submit a separate abstract & CV for each paper, and an additional abstract of the panel. All proposals should be sent to Daniel Hurewitz at daniel.hurewitz@hunter.cuny.edu by February 29, 2012, with "Hay Centennial" in the subject line.

We may have space to display/screen some artworks and present some performances along the thematic lines above: if that interests you, please email Daniel Hurewitz at the address above and submit a handful of images or performance selections either as a zip file, downloadable file, or DVD by January 31, 2012. If the latter, please send to Daniel Hurewitz, c/o CLAGS, 365 Fifth Avenue, Room 7115, New York NY 10016.

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ABOUT HARRY HAY
Gay Movement Founder, Progressive Activist 1912-2002

Biography from Americans Who Tell The Truth:

"Out of the mists of our long oppression, / We bring love for ourselves and each other, / And love for the gifts we bear, /So heavy and so painful the fashioning of them, /So long the road given us to travel them. A separate people, /We bring a gift to celebrate each other, /'Tis a gift to be gay! / Feel the pride of it!"

Harry Hay was born in England on the day the Titanic sank. When he was ten years old, he and his family moved to Los Angeles. As a young man, he worked in Hollywood as a ghostwriter and an extra on movie sets, where he met the actor Will Geer (best known for his later role as Grandpa on The Waltons). Geer became Hay's lover and introduced him to the American Communist Party. Hay became an active trade unionist and learned the organizing skills he later used to advocate for gay rights.

Despite his homosexuality, Hay married fellow Communist Party member Anita Platky in 1938 because the Party rejected gays. He helped found the Mattachine Society in 1950 to create a network of support for gays. Hay went public with the society in 1951 and he and Platky divorced. Ironically, Mattachine rejected him in the early fifties for his Communist beliefs.

He continued organizing for gay rights, championing the notion that gays represented a political and cultural minority who had to be honest about who they were if they wanted to live authentic lives. He put forth the radical idea that gays could give votes in exchange for ideological support. In 1948, Hay suggested publicly that Vice President Henry Wallace, the Progressive Party's candidate for president, would get the homosexual community's vote if he backed a sexual privacy law. It was a brave act at a time when it was illegal for gays to congregate and the American Psychological Association classified homosexuality as a mental illness.

Hay rejected the idea that homosexuals should assimilate into society—instead he thought they should change it so that gays were accepted as full individuals. He rose up against huge odds in his struggle to give American gays a voice by constantly pushing the margins of acceptability, asking questions, and taking a stand at enormous personal risk.

PRESS

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