Preferred Name
Jack Morris
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
ORCID
https://orcid.org/0009-0009-7643-7974
Date of Graduation
5-10-2024
Semester of Graduation
Spring
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Department of History
Second Advisor
Margaret M. Mulrooney
Third Advisor
Emily Westkaemper
Abstract
As the Gay Liberation movement spread across the cities of the United States during the 1970s, one institution bolstered it more than any other: the gay press. This thesis examines the role of the gay press in constructing an imagined community of gay men during the 1970s, uncovering the methods in which it fashioned a gay world that both encompassed and reached beyond the temporal and geographic boundaries of the United States. It argues that writers in gay periodicals built gay community and the Gay Liberation movement in numerous ways, such as reporting on gay history, uncovering foreign gay communities and culture, and solidifying the concerns and aspirations of the movement through public discussions of its multifarious struggles. It aims to show how the gay press’ reportage not only built a gay world by mapping the universality of homosexuality across time and space, but also how it fostered harmful divisions within the gay community just as it was pulling it together. By looking at how racist and imperialist thought was expressed in the construction of a global gay community, this work highlights the paradox of gay periodicals rhetorically bringing men from around the world together into a singular gay community, while at the same time stratifying this community through the language of race and empire. In turn, this thesis provides insight into how print cultures can construct social movements and imagined communities through a variety of mechanisms, while also spotlighting how they represent and even foster malignant divisions within the worlds they are building.
Included in
Cultural History Commons, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons, Social History Commons, United States History Commons
