Index

[BadgerHopeful]

I think it would be helpful to create a list of the leading academics in each genre/sub-genre of history if we can. This list has the potential to be helpful to both current graduate students and future applicants. I do queer history, so here goes:

Queer History:

George Chauncey, Yale, late 19th and 20th-century urban queer history

Matthew Houlbrook, Oxford, early 20th-century urban (mostly London) queer history

John d'Emilio, UI at Chicago, urban/modern queer history

Judith Butler, Berkeley (soon to be Columbia), masculinities, femininities, the body

Michael Sherry, Northwestern, gay artists, 20th-century modern

Kevin Murphy, Minnesota, modern masculinity

Nancy Enke, Wisconsin, modern masculinity/femininity, modern homosexuality

[melo]

I think it would be helpful to create a list of the leading academics in each genre/sub-genre of history if we can. This list has the potential to be helpful to both current graduate students and future applicants. I do queer history, so here goes:

Queer History:

George Chauncey, Yale, late 19th and 20th-century urban queer history

Matthew Houlbrook, Oxford, early 20th-century urban (mostly London) queer history

John d'Emilio, UI at Chicago, urban/modern queer history

Judith Butler, Berkeley (soon to be Columbia), masculinities, femininities, the body

Michael Sherry, Northwestern, gay artists, 20th-century modern

Kevin Murphy, Minnesota, modern masculinity

Nancy Enke, Wisconsin, modern masculinity/femininity, modern homosexuality

Anne Enke, Wisconsin...

[BadgerHopeful]

Oops, you're right. How ironic that I thought it was "Nancy." Ha.

[thepoorstockinger]

My understanding is that D'Emilio is in the process of retiring and isn't taking on anymore students, but I could be wrong.

Judith Butler isn't a historian by any stretch of the imagination and does not teach or supervise in history at UC Berkeley. Maybe she will at Columbia, but that would just be strange.

[BadgerHopeful]

My understanding is that D'Emilio is in the process of retiring and isn't taking on anymore students, but I could be wrong.

Judith Butler isn't a historian by any stretch of the imagination and does not teach or supervise in history at UC Berkeley. Maybe she will at Columbia, but that would just be strange.

D'Emilio has been "in the process of retiring" for about 7 or 8 years now. I'll believe it when I see it.

Butler is in the Rhetoric Department at UC Berkeley, focusing on gender and sexuality. She'll be housed in English at Columbia. History graduate students at Berkeley have the option of doing a DE, or a Designated Emphasis, as long as you are admitted to the DE BEFORE qualifying exams. One of the DE areas is Women, Gender, and Sexuality, of which Butler is a faculty member. So one would be incorrect to assume that a history PhD student could not work directly and closely with Butler for auxiliary supervision.

Edited February 6, 2011 by BadgerHopeful

[EricaMarie]

This is slightly off-topic, I know, but for the sake of not sounding ignorant should the topic arise again--

What exactly is queer history?

[rsldonk]

This is slightly off-topic, I know, but for the sake of not sounding ignorant should the topic arise again--

What exactly is queer history?

homosexual history

[StrangeLight]

homosexual history

uhhh...

it's the history of gender and sexuality, using gender theory and/or queer theory.

[rsldonk]

uhhh...

it's the history of gender and sexuality, using gender theory and/or queer theory.

I know, I just wanted to make it as simple as possible.

Edited to add:

And it doesn't help if you define a term someone doesn't understand by using that same term. If someone doesn't know what queer history is, talking about queer theory won't help in explaining it.

Edited February 6, 2011 by rsldonk

[StrangeLight]

right, but it isn't "homosexual history." queer history is not (just) the history of homosexuals (or gay people), it's the history of sexuality. sexual norms and sexual deviance, masculinities and femininities and androgyny. the same way that gender history is not "women history." sure, the history of women is part of gender history, but it's not synonymous with it.

[Iknownothing]

You mentioned Minnesota's Kevin Murphy (love him!). I would also add Regina Kunzel from UM as well.

[qbtacoma]

right, but it isn't "homosexual history." queer history is not (just) the history of homosexuals (or gay people), it's the history of sexuality. sexual norms and sexual deviance, masculinities and femininities and androgyny. the same way that gender history is not "women history." sure, the history of women is part of gender history, but it's not synonymous with it.

Especially since it would be very incorrect to project modern understandings of sexuality onto the people of the past. What is most interesting to me is how fluid sexual choice can be. So "homosexual history" doesn't cut it at all, in addition to being a bit rude since bigots like to talk about the homosexual agenda and basically do their best to turn a descriptive term into a dehumanizing one.

[qbtacoma]

Medical historians (these are US-centric and not particularly exhaustive):

Margaret Humphreys, Duke, infectious diseases in the American South, 19th and 20th centuries

Peter Ward, University of British Columbia, racism, gender, public policy in Canada, 19th century

Jessica Wang, University of British Columbia, scientific research and its political influences, US public policy, rabies, 20th century

The University of Wisconsin:

Judith Walzer Leavitt, women, social history of medicine, childbirth and gynecology, infectious disease, 19th and 20th centuries

Susan Lederer, history of medicine, media and medicine, medical ethics, 20th century

Judith Houck, menopause, sexuality, history of women's health, race, 20th century

See the whole list here

A bunch at the University of Michigan as well:

Howard Markel, immigration, US public health, late 19th and 20th centuries

Alexandra Minna Stern, eugenics, public policy, genetic counseling, California, gender and sexuality, 20th century

Joel D. Howell, US, healthcare choices, history of medicine, human experimentation, 20th century

Nancy Rose Hunt, Africa (Congo-Zaire), women, infertility, abortion, birth, sexuality, colonialism, 20th century

Regina Morantz-Sanchez, US, women, gender, the family, sexuality, women physicians, Jewish history, 19th and 20th century

Martin Pernick, history of medicine, mass media and medicine, eugenics and other bioethical issues, 20th century

Michelle McClellan, gender, addiction, public history, 20th century

Here are a few outside of history whose work is still quite relevant and who may also assist in supervising history students depending on university policy:

Gretchen Condran, Sociology Department at Temple University, mortality transition between the late 19th and 20th centuries especially in Philadelphia, infant mortality

Werner Troesken, Economics Department at the University of Pittsburgh, waterborne diseases, environmental toxins, race, 19th and 20th century US

Dora Costa, Economics Department at UCLA, race, aging, war and disease, long-term population health trends

Perhaps I will add to this later, but this is a start!

[rsldonk]

Especially since it would be very incorrect to project modern understandings of sexuality onto the people of the past. What is most interesting to me is how fluid sexual choice can be. So "homosexual history" doesn't cut it at all, in addition to being a bit rude since bigots like to talk about the homosexual agenda and basically do their best to turn a descriptive term into a dehumanizing one.

Well, we've already established I'm a bigot who doesn't like Roma and now homosexuals. I made an admitted oversimplification to clarify something to someone who had no idea what you were even talking about. I understand all that you say above, but just understand, when you say "queer history" you will be hard pressed to separate the term queer from the term homosexual to about anyone outside the field. Like it or not.

[qbtacoma]

Well, we've already established I'm a bigot who doesn't like Roma and now homosexuals. I made an admitted oversimplification to clarify something to someone who had no idea what you were even talking about. I understand all that you say above, but just understand, when you say "queer history" you will be hard pressed to separate the term queer from the term homosexual to about anyone outside the field. Like it or not.

I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to imply you yourself are a bigot - just that bigots are the ones who have made "homosexual" a disrespectful term. I am ashamed.