Brooklyn and the Birth of America's Queer Life
Learn about the seedy, fabulous, and forgotten queer history of Brooklyn, from Walt Whitman to the butches of WWII.
Cost: $12. 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.
2 TYPES OF TICKETS:
Can't make the live event? Buy a ticket for the recording and watch the event in your own time! See FAQs below for more info.
Give me now libidinous joys only!
Give me the drench of my passions! Give me life
coarse and rank!
To-day, I go consort with nature's darlings—to-night too;
I am for those who believe in loose delights—I share
the midnight orgies of young men...
-Walt Whitman
For nearly a century, the “libidinous joys,” “loose delights,” and “midnight orgies” of LGBTQ Brooklyn have been cloaked by the shadows of Manhattan.
But it was Brooklyn where Walt Whitman wrote the first poem about cruising to enter the American canon; Brooklyn, where Victorian drag artists took center stage at the close of the 19th Century; Brooklyn, where Black lesbian dancer Mabel Hampton first learned what it meant to be queer in the Roaring Twenties; Brooklyn, where Nazi spies pumped service men for state secrets in one of the biggest scandals of World War II; and Brooklyn, where Gypsy Rose Lee, W.H. Auden, and Carson McCullers nightly trolled sailor bars for dirty entertainments.
In fact, Brooklyn was a queer mecca for decades, from the moment the Erie Canal opened and reorganized all of American life. On its unique and fascinating streets, the story of what it meant to be homosexual or lesbian or transgender was written. The history of Brooklyn and the history of what it means to be queer in the Western world twine around each other like flowering vines. In this vividly illustrated presentation, author Hugh Ryan unpacks queer Brooklyn – and through Brooklyn, the queer world
Speaker Info
Hugh Ryan is a writer and curator. His new book, THE WOMEN'S HOUSE OF DETENTION, is a queer history of the prison that was once in Greenwich Village. His first book, WHEN BROOKLYN WAS QUEER, won a 2020 New York City Book Award, was a New York Times Editors' Choice in 2019, and was a finalist for the Randy Shilts and Lambda Literary Awards. He was honored with the 2020 Allan Berube Prize from the American Historical Association, and residencies / fellowships from Yaddo, The Watermill Center, the NYPL, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2019-2021, he worked on the Hidden Voices: LGBTQ+ Stories in U.S. History curricular materials for the NYC Department of Education.
A regular contributor to the Gay & Lesbian Review, Ignacio Darnaude is currently conducting a lecture series in U.S. colleges and Gay & Lesbian Centers revealing the creative codes used by queer artists to express their forbidden desires during repressive times. The response to the revelations in these lectures has been extraordinary because the sexuality of these artists has been excluded from schools' curricula, keeping their achievements hidden from both the heterosexual and the queer communities..
FAQ
When will the Zoom invite come?
The Zoom invite will be sent to your email address at 48hrs, 2hrs, and 10mins before the event. PLEASE CHECK YOUR SPAM AND SOCIAL FOLDERS IF YOU DO NOT SEE THE ZOOM INVITE IN YOUR INBOX.
What time zone is the event scheduled in?
The event is scheduled for 2pm EST (i.e. New York time). You can watch it in any time zone but please adjust to the time zone you are in.
Will the event be recorded and available to view later?
Yes the event will be recorded and you can buy a ticket for the recording above. If you buy a ticket for the recording you will be emailed automatically after the event with a link to the recording, available to view for 1 week after receiving the link. If you bought a ticket for the live event but couldn't make it please email us and we will send you the link to the recording.