Category: On Books and Publishing

The Chicago History Museum’s (CHM’s) ongoing series, Out at CHM, featured local gay historian John D’Emilio on April 15.  D’Emilio, a professor of history and gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, presented a piece entitled “Richard Nixon, Gay Liberationist?” Speaking to a packed auditorium, D’Emilio discussed the implications of his research for scholars of queer history.  He argued that while it was tempting to read the virtual end of the harassment of gay bars in the 1970s as a sign of the success of queer resistance to the Daley machine, the truth might be more prosaic and linked to wider national political changes of the time.