The Queerness of Home:
Gender, Sexuality & the Politics of Domesticity after World War II
From the Stonewall riots in 1969 to the ACT UP protests of the 1980s and ’90s, histories of queer and trans politics have almost exclusively centered on public activism.
Vider shifts the focus inward, showing that the intimacy of domestic space has been equally crucial to the history of postwar LGBTQ life.
News
The Queerness of Home was one of six finalists for the Huntington Library’s biennial Shapiro Prize for an outstanding first scholarly monograph in American political, social, intellectual, or cultural history published in 2021 and 2022.
The Queerness of Home has received honorable mention for the Alan Bray Memorial Prize for best book in LGBTQ literary and cultural studies in 2021, given jointly from the GLQ Caucus of the Modern Language Association and the Q/T Caucus of the American Studies Association.
The Queerness of Home received honorable mention for the John Hope Franklin Prize for best book in American Studies in 2021 from the American Studies Assocation.
Watch videos of Vider in conversation with Greta LaFleur at the Harvard Bookstore and with Peter Terzian at Greenlight Bookstore.
Leilah Stone writes about The Queerness of Home in “Queer Spaces Will Always Be Necessary” in Metropolis .
Read Jesse Dorris’s interview with Vider about the meanings of domestic photography for LGBTQ history on Aperture .
Order The Queerness of Home: Gender, Sexuality, and the Politics of Domesticity After World War II.
Stephen Vider is a social, cultural, and political historian.
His research, teaching, and public scholarship explore the history of gender, sexuality, home, and family in the United States after World War II.
Vider’s writing has appeared in a range of academic journals and anthologies as well as newspapers and magazines including the New York Times and Slate.
In 2017, he curated the exhibition AIDS at Home: Art and Everyday Activism for the Museum of the City of New York. He has also consulted on a range of public history projects, including exhibitions, walking tours, films, and musicals.
Vider is a member at the School of Historical Studies of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton for Spring 2024. In fall 2024, he will be joining the history and gender and sexuality studies departments at Bryn Mawr College, where he will also teach and advise in History of Art. He was previously Associate Professor of History and founding director of the Public History Initiative at Cornell University, and Associate Professor of History at University of Connecticut.