BOOK, ESSAYS, AND COMMENTARY
Earlier Work
Queer Clout
Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016
Paperback edition, 2017
Tracing the gay movement's trajectory since the 1950s from the closet to the corridors of power, Queer Clout explains why the path to political power for gays and lesbians in postwar America led through city hall.
- — Winner of the 2017 John Boswell Prize
- — Finalist for the 2017 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Studies
Selected Scholarly Articles & Chapters
“Trans Rights and the Emerging Politics of Gender”
The Presidency of Joseph R. Biden, 2026
“Sodom on the Passaic: Excavating Early Queer Histories of Newark, 1870s–1940s”(with Peter Savastano)
Queer Newark, 2024
“The Fall of Walter Jenkins and the Hidden History of the Lavender Scare”
Intimate States, 2021
“AIDS and the Urban Crisis: Stigma, Cost, and the Persistence of Racism in Chicago, 1981–1996”
Beyond the Politics of the Closet, 2020
The Presidency of Barack Obama, 2018
“The Law and Order Origins of Urban Gay Politics”
Journal of Urban History, 2015
“Queer Law and Order: Sex, Criminality, and Policing in the Late Twentieth-Century United States”
Journal of American History, 2015
“A Community's Response to the Problem of Invisibility: The Queer Newark Oral History Project”(with Darnell L. Moore, Beryl Satter, and Whitney Strub)
QED: A Journal in Queer Worldmaking, 2014
“Picturing Same-Sex Marriage in the Antebellum United States: The Union of 'Two Most Excellent Men' in Longstreet's 'A Sage Conversation'”(with Simon Stern)
Journal of the History of Sexuality, 2010
Gender & History, 2007
Selected Op-Eds
“How the Black Press Helped Pave the Way for Gay Rights”
The Washington Post, 2019
“Queer Clout in Chicago: Telling Gay History Beyond Stonewall and the Castro”
Slate, 2016
“Stonewall and the Politics of Memory”
Process: A Blog for American History, 2015
The New York Times, 2015
Public History
Museum Exhibitions
- Consultant, Designing for Change: Chicago Protest Art of the 1960s–70s, Chicago History Museum, opened 2024Essay written for the exhibition catalog
- Consultant, The Many Hats of Ralph Arnold: Art, Identity and Politics, Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago, Fall 2018Essay written for the exhibition catalog
Documentary Films
- Masters of Drag, WNET/THIRTEEN Productions, Summer 2021 (an eight-part series of short-video documentaries on pioneering American drag artists)
Arts Collaborations
- Quiet No More: A Choral Celebration of Stonewall, co-commissioned by the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus and the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles (2019)