L.A.’s Role in Shaping American Gay History
Stuart Timmons (Gay L.A., et al) and Daniel Hurewitz (Bohemian Los Angeles) in conversation, moderated by William Deverell (USC Prof., Land of Sunshine, et al) @ ALOUD @ Central Library [event info]
What I love about hearing Daniel Hurewitz speak it how much he loves the research part of his work. This time, like last time, he spoke about everything from the archives to the interviews: how reading one of his subject’s suicide note in the archives (after having read his letters and journals) made him cry; how he loves just listening to people talk on while he’s interviewing them; the joys of archives, etc.
Some notes:
D.H.: one painful part of being a historian of the recent past is that you’re barely ahead of death, recovering history even as it’s being lost; with his book he wanted to show that the story of L.A. is not just a Hollywood story; how has the story of bohemian America been told—as a N.Y. story?; gender as cultural constructions; changing motives for persecution—depends on time period: Great Depression already social anxiety, current mood about “family values” and gays as threat to family
S.T.: how the city loosens up and expresses itself increasingly through history to now with, ex., Brokeback Mountain; periods of more freedom are not so well documented because they’re more enjoyed (my note: c.f. keeping a journal—when you’re happy and busy, you don’t so much, but depressed or bored, you do; personal history vs. public history); “social vagrants” euphemism used by newspapers for gay men
W.D.: “identity history”—how it moves from “we were here too” to “you can’t understand the history of this place without us”; “our grasp upon the past is fleeting and fragile”
context of studying history, my question: why is a change/shift in “male norms” a “crisis of masculinity” (W.D. brings up that throughout history study there seem to be many of these “crises”) but a shift in “female norms” is (often) empowerment?