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Online Event: The Queer History Of Prohibition From The Center In New York NY

Online. At The Center , 208 West 13th Street, New York, NY. United states.

Tuesday June 2 2020, 6:30pm

Online Event: The Queer History Of Prohibition From The Center In New York NY

June 2, 2020 - 6:30PM to 8:00PM EST

Join the Art Deco Society of New York and The Center for a fascinating look back at Prohibition 100 years after it began! As the ‘20s begin to roar again, there are a surprising number of similarities between the 1920s and today, particularly for LGBTQ Americans. In this talk, historian and playwright Daniel Hurewitz invite us to reconsider the lost history of Prohibition.

The story is one of widening tolerance for a celebration of gender-defying performers. As a “Pansy Craze” swept from Times Square to Hollywood, it made celebrities out of folks like the drag performer Jean Malin, the bawdy tuxedo-clad singer Gladys Bentley and the sexually adventurous Mother of the Blues, Ma Rainey; it even landed a lesbian drama on Broadway. And yet, at the same time, the end of Prohibition in 1933 brought new forms of censorship and moral regulation into American popular culture and nightlife—ones that increasingly drove LGBTQ individuals out of the mainstream, and into segregated isolation.

About the Speaker
Daniel Hurewitz is a playwright and an associate professor of history at Hunter College. His work has focused on the development of 20th-century U.S. gendered and sexual identities and the emergence of LGBTQ politics. His first book, “Stepping Out” (1997), traced a history of LGBTQ life across Manhattan, presented as a series of walking tours. His second book, “Bohemian Los Angeles and the Making of Modern Politics” (2007), was named a Los Angeles Times bestseller and focused on the communities of L.A. artists, leftists and queer activists who helped give birth to the American LGBTQ rights movement. More recently, he has been working to translate the scholarship of LGBTQ history to wider audiences with the New York City Department of Education and local teachers to develop a curriculum that they can bring into their classrooms. Hurewitz has also written plays about queer American history, such as “Reclamation” and “Nancy F***ing Reagan,” named Best New Play for the 2019 Los Angeles theater season.

www.gaycenter.org/queer-prohibition