
My work in queer history can be roughly divided into two different projects. The first is a pair of articles in the Journal of the History of Sexuality and GLQ that explore a network of midcentury American businessmen who used an epistolary network to meet one another when they traveled for work in order to facilitate sex and camaraderie. The JHS article was awarded an honorable mention for the Audre Lorde Prize from the Committee on LGBT History
I have also written about a mid-twentieth-century queer couple, Robert and John Gregg Allerton, who lived publicly as father and son and eventually legalized their relationship through an adult-child adoption in Illinois in 1960 (the first in the state’s history). I have published articles in Genders and the Pacific Historical Review, as well as An Open Secret: The Family Story of Robert and John Gregg Allerton, which was released in 2021 by the University of Chicago Press and received an Award of Superior Achievement from the Illinois State Historical Society.
I also contributed to the Lambda Literary Award-winning Understanding and Teaching U.S. LGBT History (ed. Leila Rupp and Susan Freeman), which led to a podcast episode with Sharon Ullman on teaching LGBT history via TV and film. I served as Co-Chair (with Amanda Littauer) of the Committee on LGBT History, the AHA affiliate society, from 2015 to 2019. With Amy Sueyoshi, I co-chaired the CLGBTH’s first two conferences, QHC19 and QHC22. With Eric Gonzaba, I am co-chairing QHC24.
I’ve done interviews about my research in queer history for a number of venues: