From Whitman to Wigstock— LGBTQ writers and artists Greenwich Village tour
Learn about Greenwich Village's role as a hotbed for LGBTQ literature and arts, from the mid-19th century until the 1980s
Cost: $10. Please note that this fee helps keep our small business going during the crisis so we can get up and running right away when it is safe to bring people together again in person.
Learn about Greenwich Village's role as a hotbed for LGBTQ literature and arts, from the mid-19th century until the 1980s.
Where did Walt Whitman hang out with other writers? Where did James Baldwin write Another Country? Where did Gore Vidal pick up Jack Kerouac? Where did Rita Mae Brown do her PhD? Where did Harvey Fierstein workshop Torchsong Trilogy? You guessed it. In that section (vaguely defined) of Manhattan called Greenwich Village.
Greenwich Village has a long history as America's first gayborhood, dating to at least the beginning of the 20th century. And it has an even longer history as America's first and main Bohemian neighborhood—sort of a large, urban artists' colony. This started in the mid-19th century, when artists like Winslow Homer, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman lived, created, and socialized in the Village. And it lasted a long time: it is in the Village that many trends, movements and artistic institutions started and flourished, among others Off-Broadway theater, the Beats, Off-off Broadway theater, Pop Art, the Factory, and Wigstock. And as so often with the arts, there was a huge overlap between the LGBTQ Village and the Bohemian Village. Just to name a few, LGBTQ Villagers included: Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, Edna St. Vincent Millay, W. H. Auden, Frank O'Hara, Allen Ginsberg, and Audre Lorde; Arthur Laurents, Edward Albee, Lanford Wilson, Charles Busch and Harvey Fierstein; Herman Melville, Henry James, Djuna Barnes, Willa Cather, James Baldwin, William S. Burroughs, Rita Mae Brown, Larry Kramer and Edmund White; Paul Cadmus, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, and Jean-Michel Basquiat; Berenice Abbott and Robert Mapplethorpe; Merce Cunningham and John Cage; Lou Reed and the Village People: and Quentin Crisp.
So come on this fascinating and entertaining 75 minute Zoom (including Q&A), and let Professor Andrew Lear of Oscar Wilde Tours show you where America's LGBTQ artists, writers, performers lived, worked, and played in the Village's years as America's great LGBTQ artists' colony.
When will the Zoom invite come? The Zoom invite will be sent to your email 24 hrs before the event, followed by subsequent reminder emails that will include the Zoom link. Please check your spam and social folders if you do not see it in your inbox. If you do not receive a Zoom invitation by 1hr before the event please get in contact with us. And please sign on a few minutes early, to make sure that the link works for you. We will be unavailable to help once the tour starts.
What time zone? The event is scheduled for 2pm Eastern Daylight Time (i.e. New York time). You can watch it in any time zone but please adjust to the time zone you are in.
More about our speaker:
Professor Andrew Lear combines a love of travel with a passion for gay history, and he brings both of those attributes to Oscar Wilde Tours.
Professor Lear holds a B.A. from Harvard and a Ph.D. from UCLA. He has published a widely praised book on male-male love in ancient Greek art, as well as a number of important scholarly articles in this area. Indeed he is generally considered one of the foremost experts on same-sex love in the ancient world, but his interest in gay history extends to other key periods, such as fin-de-siècle England, Renaissance Italy, and medieval Japan—places and periods that we will explore at Oscar Wilde Tours.
A beloved teacher at Harvard, Columbia and NYU, Professor Lear won the Harvard Certificate for Excellence in Teaching four times. He has taught a wide variety of courses in Classics, history, art history, and gender studies—as well as Italian and French language classes.
His courses on sexuality in the ancient world have been particularly popular. Many years after graduating, students still take the time to let him know how much they appreciated his personal warmth, his passion for teaching, and the sense of fun that he brings to his classes.
Professor Lear brings all those qualities to Oscar Wilde Tours, along with twenty years of experience organizing and leading group tours. With his vast cultural background, his detailed knowledge of gay history and his long experience of travel, Professor Lear strives to provide our guests with a vacation that is intellectually stimulating, culturally rewarding and, above all, fun!
Read Professor Andrew Lear’s official Wikipedia biography here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Lear