CUNY DIGITAL HISTORY ARCHIVE

This poster advertises the Queer Middle Ages conference, which was held by CLAGS on November 5th and 6th 1998 at the CUNY Graduate Center and on November 7th, 1998 at New York University. The conference was one of the first to address the growing interest in gender and sexuality in the Middle Ages on such a large scale, with over 150 individuals in attendance. Twenty-five distinct sessions were held over the course of the three-day conference, covering a large variety of topics such as “Queering Medieval Institutions,” “Medieval Jewish Homoerotic Desire,” “Queering Queer” and “Same-Sex Desire and Medieval Religion.” Carolyn Dinshaw, one of the conferences four plenary speakers, has become one of the leading experts in this field.

Although formally instituted at the CUNY Graduate Center in 1991, CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies was first conceived 5 years earlier by Martin, Duberman, one of the first historians to embrace the, then infantile, field of Queer Studies. Duberman sensed the need for a formal center devoted to queer research. As the first university-based center for LGBTQ research, CLAGS continues to demonstrate its dedication to advancing Queer Studies, by hosting public events showcasing queer research and sponsoring fellowships to support queer scholars. Among its many notable contributions, CLAGS annually puts on at least one major conference and holds the Kessler Award Lecture every fall to celebrate a queer scholar who has made a notable contribution to the field of queer studies.