Ambivalent Affinities: A Political History of Blackness and Homosexuality after World War II
JENNIFER DOMINIQUE JONES (author of Ambivalent Affinities)
- Assistant Professor of History and Women’s and Gender Studies
AVA PURKISS
- Assistant Professor of American Culture, Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Women’s and Gender Studies
SARA MCCLELLAND
- Associate Professor of Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies
In this interdisciplinary historical study, Jennifer Dominique Jones reveals the underexamined origins of comparisons between Black and LGBT political constituencies in the modern civil rights movement and white supremacist backlash. Foregrounding an intersectional framing of postwar political histories, Jones demonstrates how the shared non-normative status of Blackness and homosexuality facilitated comparisons between subjects and political visions associated with both. Drawing upon organizational records, manuscript collections, newspaper accounts, and visual and textual ephemera, this study traces a long, conflicting relationship between Black and LGBT political identities that continues to the present day.
This event is part of IRWG’s Gender: New Works, New Questions series, which spotlights new books by our faculty. This event will be presented in-person and include a raffle for attendees to win a free copy of the book!
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