Queer Then and Now: The David R. Kessler Lectures, 2002–2020

An essential anthology of leading academics, activists, and artists on the state of queer studies today.

The David R. Kessler Lectures, established in 1992 by CLAGS: Center for LGBTQ Studies at the City University of New York, represent the cutting edge of queer studies in the United States. Queer Then and Now collects the lectures given from 2002 to 2020 by some of the most influential scholars, artists, and activists of the last two decades—Adrienne Rich, Amber Hollibaugh, Cathy J. Cohen, Cheryl Clarke, Dean Spade, Douglas Crimp, Gayle Rubin, Isaac Julien, Jasbir K. Puar, Jonathan Ned Katz, Martin Duberman, Richard Fung, Roderick A. Ferguson, Sara Ahmed, Sarah Schulman, Susan Stryker, and Urvashi Vaid—alongside new reflections and two scholarly roundtables.

Diverse and dynamic, these lectures and intertextual conversations tackle some of today’s most important interventions from the margins—including the growth of trans studies, the synergy and disconnect between theory and activism, the role of LGBTQ+ art and media, and the challenge of transnational and postcolonial theory. Charting the intellectual development of queer studies after the 1990s, Queer Then and Now lays the groundwork for queer thinking in the twenty-first century and beyond.

The Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS), located at the City University of New York, Graduate Center, was founded in 1991 and is 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, transgender, and queer individuals and communities.

Debanuj DasGupta is assistant professor of feminist studies at University of California at Santa Barbara. Debanuj’s research and teaching focuses on racialized regulation of space, immigration detention, queer migrations and the global governance of migration, sexuality, and HIV.

Joseph Donica is associate professor of English at Bronx Community College, CUNY. His research and teaching focus on Arab-American literature, urban studies, the history of technology, the legal and ethical framework of US citizenship, and queer diasporic literatures of the Middle East and North Africa.

Margot Weiss is associate professor of American studies and anthropology at Wesleyan University, where she established and directs the cluster in Queer Studies and is affiliated with Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her research and teaching focuses on the relationship between queer sexual cultures and US neoliberal capitalism.