Time Out Chicago profiles gender historian John D'Emilio
As an LGBT historian and an out man since the Stonewall era, John D’Emilio thought he’d seen it all—until he moved here in 1999. “The rainbow pylons on Halsted had just gone up the year before,” he says. “I am driving around and when I see these things I just began to laugh. I thought, Oh, my God, a city has actually put up markers saying this is a gay-friendly neighborhood. Who ever heard of such a thing?” For D’Emilio, 61, a professor of history and women’s and gender studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the pylons illustrated how much times had changed. “As time marches on, you realize that, while not all problems are solved, history is the story of change.”
The native New Yorker attended Columbia University as both an undergrad and grad student, earning a Ph.D. in history; he was part of a movement of faculty and staff who tried to make the university more helpful to gay liberation. D’Emilio says he was out as early as high school and college—at least the ’60s version of the term. “Today, ‘out’ has come to mean being public,” he says. “‘Out’ in the ’60s meant you acknowledged you are gay to other gay people. Almost nobody was out in the way we mean now.”
D’Emilio happened to be abroad the summer of ’69, when the Stonewall riots broke out in NYC, but he remembers the era well. Unfortunately, he says, those events are lost on much of today’s generation. “Many people who watch the parade in June on Halsted and Broadway don’t know the parade is held on that weekend to commemorate the Stonewall riots in New York City,” he says. “That is the truth.”
And that is also why D’Emilio’s work remains urgent. At UIC, where he’s taught since 1999, D’Emilio offers courses such as “Sexuality and Community” and “Historical Perspectives on Sexuality.” His books include the Stonewall Award–winning Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities and The World Turned: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and Culture. “I came to the writing of gay history not to end my sense of isolation but because my isolation had ended,” D’Emilio says. “I was a part of a vibrant gay community in the 1970s that provided me the support to believe I could do this kind of work. Historical research gave me a bigger sense of contemporary life and how we got to this place.”...
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The native New Yorker attended Columbia University as both an undergrad and grad student, earning a Ph.D. in history; he was part of a movement of faculty and staff who tried to make the university more helpful to gay liberation. D’Emilio says he was out as early as high school and college—at least the ’60s version of the term. “Today, ‘out’ has come to mean being public,” he says. “‘Out’ in the ’60s meant you acknowledged you are gay to other gay people. Almost nobody was out in the way we mean now.”
D’Emilio happened to be abroad the summer of ’69, when the Stonewall riots broke out in NYC, but he remembers the era well. Unfortunately, he says, those events are lost on much of today’s generation. “Many people who watch the parade in June on Halsted and Broadway don’t know the parade is held on that weekend to commemorate the Stonewall riots in New York City,” he says. “That is the truth.”
And that is also why D’Emilio’s work remains urgent. At UIC, where he’s taught since 1999, D’Emilio offers courses such as “Sexuality and Community” and “Historical Perspectives on Sexuality.” His books include the Stonewall Award–winning Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities and The World Turned: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and Culture. “I came to the writing of gay history not to end my sense of isolation but because my isolation had ended,” D’Emilio says. “I was a part of a vibrant gay community in the 1970s that provided me the support to believe I could do this kind of work. Historical research gave me a bigger sense of contemporary life and how we got to this place.”...