Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940

Born in 1954, George Chauncey is a historian specializing in the history of LGBTQ sexuality and 20th-century US social history. Since completing his PhD in History at Yale University in 1989, he has taught US history and the history of gender and sexuality at the University of Chicago, Rutgers University, New York University, the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, Yale University, and currently Columbia University. He has served as the director of the Columbia Research Initiative on the Global History of Sexualities, focusing on literature that researched gender and sexuality.

Additionally, Chauncey has also served as an expert witness on the history of gay people and discrimination in the US, providing expert testimonies and briefs in several cases, including Lawrence v. Texas, a 2003 Supreme Court case that overturned sodomy laws across the US, and Perry v. Schwarzenegger, a 2010 case that was one of a series of federal court cases that overturned California’s ban on same-sex marriage.

As of this writing, Chauncey is completing a follow-up to Gay New York, titled The Strange Career of the Closet: Gay Culture, Consciousness, and Politics from the Second World War to the Gay Liberation Era, covering the history of gay cultures in New York City in the post-World War II decades.