Marc Stein

I am a historian of U.S. law, politics, and society, with research and teaching interests in constitutional law, social movements, gender, race and sexuality. My books and articles have focused on twentieth century urban gay and lesbian history; U.S. Supreme Court decisions on sex, marriage and reproduction; queer political activism; and sexual politics in the discipline of history. Over the last decade I have taught courses on U.S. constitutional law, gender and sexuality in North American history and the history of twentieth century political movements.

Education

• Ph.D., History, University of Pennsylvania, 1994
• B.A., History, Wesleyan University, 1985

Current and Previous Positions

• Director, OutHistory, 2023-
• Co-Editor, Queer Pasts (Alexander Street/ProQuest), 2020-
• Coordinator, Rights and Wrongs: A Constitution Day Conference at SF State, 2015-
• Academic Senator, San Francisco State Univ., 2021-23
• Jamie and Phyllis Pasker Professor of History, History Dept., San Francisco State Univ., 2014-
• Chair (2013-15) and Member (2015-16), Organization of American Historians Committee on the Status of LGBTQ Historians and Histories, 2013-16.
• Member, LGBTQ Historians Task Force of the American Historical Association, 2009-15.
• Assistant, Associate, and Full Professor, History Dept. and School of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, York Univ., 1998-2016 (leave of absence 2014-16)
• Chair, Committee on Lesbian and Gay History, 2000-03.
• Visiting Assistant Professor, History Dept., Colby College, 1996-98
• Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Gender Studies, Bryn Mawr College, 1995-96
• Lecturer and Chimicles Fellow, History Dept., Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1993-95

Honors and Awards:

• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant, 2014-16
• Faculty of Graduate Studies Teaching Award, York Univ., 2010
• Audre Lorde Prize for Best Article, Committee on Lesbian and Gay History, 2006
• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Standard Research Grant, 2001-05
• Gregory Sprague Prize for Best Chapter, Committee on Lesbian and Gay History, 1996
• Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Gender Studies, Bryn Mawr College, 1995-96
• Ohio State Univ, Postdoctoral Fellowship (declined), 1995-96
• Andrew W. Mellon Dissertation Fellowship, Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1993-94
• Ken Dawson Annual Award for Lesbian/Gay History, Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, City Univ. of New York, 1993
• Phi Beta Kappa and Leonard Prize, Wesleyan Univ., 1985

Edited Works:

• Guest Editor, “U.S. Homophile Internationalism,” Journal of Homosexuality 64.7 (Apr. 2017).
• Editor-in-Chief, Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History in America (3 volumes) (New York: Scribners, 2003). Library Journal “Best Reference,” 2004; Booklist “Editor’s Choice,” 2004; Reference and User Services Assoc. “Outstanding Reference Source,” 2005; New York Public Library “Best of Reference,” 2005.

Book Chapters:

• “Heterosexual Inversions: Satire, Parody, and Comedy in the 1950s and 1960s,” Heterosexual Histories: Collected Essays about Sexuality, Norms, and U.S. History, ed. Rebecca Davis and Michele Mitchell (New York: NYU Press, 2021), 195-224.
• “Law and Politics: ‘Crooked and Perverse’ Narratives of LGBT Progress,” Routledge History of Queer America, ed. Don Romesburg (New York: Routledge, 2018), 315-330.
• “Race, Class, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Doctrine of Heteronormative Supremacy,” in Connexions: Histories of Race and Sex in North America, ed. Jennifer Brier, Jim Downs, and Jennifer Morgan (Champaign: Univ. of Illinois Press, 2016), 59-81.
• “Historical Landmarks and Landscapes of LGBTQ Law,” in LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History, ed. Megan Springate (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 2016), 1-47. Reprinted in Communities and Place: A Thematic Approach to the Histories of LGBTQ Communities in the United States, ed. Katherine Crawford-Lackey and Megan E. Springate (New York: Berghahn, 2020), 104-149.
• “Sexual Rights and Wrongs: Teaching the U.S. Supreme Court’s Greatest Gay and Lesbian Hits,” in Understanding and Teaching U.S. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History, ed. Leila Rupp and Susan Freeman (Madison: Univ. Wisconsin Press, 2014), 238-53.
• “Rizzo’s Raiders, Beaten Beats, and Coffeehouse Culture in 1950s Philadelphia,” in Modern American Queer History: Essays in Representation, Lived Experience, and Public Policy, ed. Allida M. Black (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 2001), 155-80.
• “‘Birthplace of the Nation’: Imagining Lesbian and Gay Communities in Philadelphia, 1969-70,” in Creating a Place for Ourselves, ed. B. Beemyn (New York: Routledge, 1997), 253-88.

Peer Reviewed Articles:

• “Students, Sodomy, and the State: LGBT Campus Struggles in the 1970s,” Law and Social Inquiry 48.2 (May 2023): 531–560 (published online Apr. 2022).
• “Teaching and Researching the History of Sexual Politics at San Francisco State, 1969-1970,” California History 98.4 (Winter 2021): 2-29.
• “Canada and Canadians in the U.S. Homophile Press,” Journal of Homosexuality 64.7 (Apr. 2017): 963-990.
• “Introduction: U.S. Homophile Internationalism,” Journal of Homosexuality 64.7 (Apr. 2017): 843-849.
• “The Future of LGBT Civil Rights History: New and Forthcoming Books in the Field,” Journal of Civil and Human Rights 1.2 (Fall/Winter 2015): 201-211.
• “Canonizing Homophile Sexual Respectability: Archives, History, and Memory,” Radical History Review 120 (Fall 2014): 52-73.
• “All the Immigrants Are Straight, All the Homosexuals Are Citizens, But Some of Us Are Queer Aliens: Genealogies of Legal Strategy in Boutilier v. INS,” Journal of American Ethnic History 29.4 (Summer 2010): 45-77.
• “Crossing the Border to Memory: In Search of Clive Michael Boutilier (1933-2003),” torquere 6 (2004): 91-115 (published Nov. 2005).
• “Boutilier and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Sexual Revolution,” Law and History Review 23.3 (Fall 2005): 491-536 (awarded Audre Lorde Prize).
• “Theoretical Politics, Local Communities: The Making of U.S. LGBT Historiography,” GLQ 11.4 (2005): 605-25.
• “Crossing Borders: Memories, Dreams, Fantasies, and Nightmares of the History Job Market.” Left History 9.2 (Spring/Summer 2004): 119-39.
• “Sex Politics in the City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves,” Radical History Review 59 (Spring 1994): 60-92. Reprinted in Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality, ed. Kathy L. Peiss (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), 431-43.

Encyclopedia Entries:

• “The Stonewall Riots,” in SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies, ed. Abbie Goldberg and Genny Beemyn (Los Angeles: Sage, 2021), 803-806.
• “Gay and Lesbian Communities,” in Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History, ed. Lynn Dumenil (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2012), vol. 1, p. 432-437.
• “Gay Men’s Cultures in Cities” and “Queer Space,” in Encyclopedia of American Urban History, ed. David Goldfield (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2006), vol. 1, p. 297-299 and vol. 2, p. 633-35.
• “African Americans,” “Class and Class Oppression,” “Coming Out and Outing,” “Gay Community News,” “Homophile Movement Demonstrations,” “Interracial and Interethnic Sex and Relationships,” “Janus Society,” “Clark Polak,” and “Police and Policing,” in Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History in America, ed. Marc Stein (New York: Scribners, 2003), 1:10-16, 221-24, 252-55, 432-34, 2:56-58, 84-87, 93-95, 388-394.
• “Gay Community News,” in Gay Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia, ed. George E. Hagerty (New York: Garland, 2000), 369-70.
• “Barbara Gittings,” in Lesbian Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia, ed. Bonnie Zimmerman (New York: Garland, 2000), 335.

Digital History Exhibits: 

• “LGBT Direct Action Bibliography, Chronology, and Inventory, 1965-73,” OutHistory and Queer Pasts, Mar. 2023
• “Introduction” and “Bucks County Community College,” “Out on Campus: A History of LGBTQ+ Activism at Pennsylvania Colleges and Universities,” Pennsylvania LGBT History Network, 2022
• “Sodomites and Gender Transgressors in 1840s New York,” Queer Pasts (Alexander St./ProQuest, Nov. 2022)
• “Power, Politics, and Race in the 1968 Philadelphia Study of Prison Sexual Violence,” Queer Pasts (Alexander St./ProQuest), Nov. 2021.
• “Documenting the Stonewall Riots: A Bibliography of Primary Sources,” 2019
• “Boutilier v. Immigration and Naturalization Service (1967), OutHistory, 22 May 2017
• “U.S. Homophile Internationalism: Archive and Exhibit,” OutHistory, Dec. 2015
• “Annual Reminders in Philadelphia, July 4, 1965-July 4, 1969,” OutHistory, 23 Jun. 2015
• “Dewey’s Sit-In in Philadelphia, 1965,” OutHistory, 20 Apr. 2015
• “Philadelphia LGBT History Project,” OutHistory, Jan. 2010; revised Sep. 2013, Nov. 2014, and July 2016

Other Publications:

• “The End of Faculty Tenure and the Transformation of Higher Education,” Academe, Winter 2023
• “Out on Campus: A Collaborative Project on Pennsylvania LGBTQ+ History,” Perspectives on History, Dec. 2022
• “Out on Campus: An Interview with Curator Barry Loveland," History@ Work, 2 and 6 December 2022, Part 1 and Part 2
• “Historicizing Historians: Debating Gay Studies in the 1970s,” Perspectives on History, Oct. 2022, 23-25
• “The End of Faculty Tenure,” Inside Higher Ed, 25 Apr. 2022
• “Bringing Queer History to the Public,” History News Network, 17 April 2022
• “Punish the Voting Rights Villains,” Public Seminar, 26 May 2021
• “When A Boycott Blocks Queer Research,” Public Seminar, 18 May 2021
• “‘Where Perversion is Taught’: The Untold History of a Gay Rights Demonstration at Bucks County Community College in 1968,” OutHistory, 13 Apr. 2021
• “Recalling Purple Hands Protests of 1969,” Bay Area Reporter, 31 Oct. 2019, 4-5
• “Stonewall and Queens,” From the Square: NYU Press Blog, 9 Aug. 2019
• “Queer Rage: Police Violence and the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969,” Process: A Blog for American History, 3 June 2019
• “A Theory of Revolution for the Riots,” The Gay & Lesbian Review, May 2019, 19-20.
• “50 Years Ago the US Supreme Court Upheld the Deportation of ‘Homosexuals’ As ‘Psychopaths,’” History News Network, 22 May 2017
• “Queering Immigration in the Age of Trump: A Roundtable on Boutilier v. INS,” Notches, 22 May 2017
• “Immigration Is a Queer Issue: From Fleuti to Trump,” UNC Press Blog, 24 Feb. 2017
• “Political History and the History of Sexuality,” Perspectives on History, Jan. 2017, 17-21
• “North Carolina’s Brutal Tradition of Sexual and Gender Discrimination,” History News Network, 4 Apr. 2016
• “Jonathan Ned Katz Murdered Me: History and Suicide,” Process: A Blog for American History, 8 Mar. 2016
• “The Supreme Court Nomination and the Politics of Checks and Balances,” AHA Today, 29 Feb. 2016
• “Monica, Bill, History, and Sex,” Active History, 13 Nov. 2015
• “Did You Know California Requires Professors to Sign A Loyalty Oath,” History News Network, 13 Sep. 2015
• “Refreshing Abominations: An Open Letter to Anthony Kennedy,” Outhistory, 4 May 2015
• “Happy Anniversary to the Dewey’s Sit-In,” Bay Area Reporter, 23 April 2015
• “The First Gay Sit-In Happened Fifty Years Ago,” History News Network, 6 Apr. 2015
• “Sexual Politics in the Era of Reagan and Thatcher: Marc Stein in Conversation with Jeffrey Weeks,” Notches, 10 Feb. 2015
• Contributor, Making the Framework FAIR: California History-Social Science Framework Proposed LGBT Revisions,by Don Romesburg, Leila J. Rupp, David Donahue (San Francisco: Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History, 2014).
• “Heterosexuality in America: Fifty Years and Counting,” Notches, 22 July 2014
• “Sotomayor v. Roberts: Race, Affirmative Action, and Impatience,” UNC Press Blog, 8 July 2014
• “The Long Struggle to Stop Employment Discrimination Against LGBT People Is Even Longer Than You Think,” History News Network, 23 Jun. 2014
• “Memories of the 1987 March on Washington,” Aug. 2013, OutHistory.org
• “Five Myths about Roe v. Wade,” UNC Press Blog, 22 Jan. 2013
• “Justice Kennedy and the Future of Same-Sex Marriage,” UNC Press Blog, 8 Nov. 2010
• “Gay Rights and the Supreme Court: The Early Years,” UNC Press Blog, 4 Oct. 2010
• “Fifty Years of LGBT Movement Activism in Philadelphia,” Philadelphia Gay News, 30 Sep. 2010
• “In My Wildest Dreams: The Marriage That Dare Not Speak Its Name,” History News Network, 4 Jan. 2010
• “The U.S. Supreme Court’s Sexual Counter-Revolution,” Organization of American Historians Magazine of History 20, no. 2 (Mar. 2006): 21-25.
• “Post-Tenure Lavender Blues,” History News Network, 7 Jan. 2006
• “Did the FBI Try to Blackmail Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas,” History News Network, 18 July 2005
• “Recalling Dewey’s Sit-In,” Philadelphia Gay News, 29 Apr. 2005, 10, 22-23. Reprinted as “The First Gay Sit-In,” History News Network, 9 May 2005
• “If W Had Written the Declaration of Independence,” History News Network, 1 Nov. 2004
• “Mr. President: I’m Glad You Called,” History News Network, 8 Mar. 2004
• “Forgetting and Remembering a Deported Alien,” History News Network, 3 Nov. 2003
• “Balancing LGBTQ Student Services and LGBTQ Studies,” Up and Out: The Newsletter of PennGALA, Mar. 2002, 2-3.
• “Committee on Lesbian and Gay History Survey on LGBTQ History Careers,” June 2001
• “Committee on Lesbian and Gay History Survey on LGBTQ History Careers,” Perspectives 39, no. 5 (May 2001): 29-31
• “Modern History,” Au Courant, Philadelphia, Oct. 1995, 11, 18, 21.
• “Looking at Philadelphia’s History of Gay Pride,” Au Courant, 31 Jan. 1995, 8.
• “Approaching Stonewall From the City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves,” Gay Community News, June 1994, 14-15, 30.
• “Coming Out and Going Public: A History of Lesbians and Gay Men in Philadelphia,” Pride ‘93 Program (Philadelphia: Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Pride of the Delaware Valley, 1993), 11-19.
• “British Gay Left,” An Interview with Jeffrey Weeks, Gay Community News, 30 Oct. 1988, 8-9.

Invited Academic Lectures and Presentations 

• “Master Class: The History of Pride,” Rutgers University, Camden, June 2023.
• “Out On Campus: How Bucks Students Made Gay Rights History,” Bucks County Community College, May 2023.
• “Students, Sodomy, and the State: LGBT Campus Struggles in the 1970s,” Lafayette College, Mar. 2023; California State Univ.-Channel Islands, Oct. 2022; Univ. Toronto, Apr. 2018; Franklin and Marshall College, Oct. 2017; Virginia Commonwealth Univ., Oct. 2016.
• “Queer Public History,” University of California, Santa Barbara, Mar. 2023; California State Univ.-East Bay, Oct. 2022.
• “LGBT Direct Action Bibliography, Chronology, and Inventory, 1965-73,” University of California, Santa Barbara, Mar. 2023.
• “What’s Happening to Tenure?” American Association for University Professors, Feb. 2023.
• “Queer Transformations at San Francisco State, 1969-1972,” Labor Archives Research Center, San Francisco State Univ., Oct. 2022.
• “Bucks Looks Back: Gay Rights History Made Here,” Bucks County Community College, May 2022.
• “Historicizing Stonewall,” Univ. Edinburgh, Feb. 2022.
• “California and the Stonewall Riots,” California State Univ.-Stanislau, Oct. 2019; Sonoma State Univ., Feb. 2019.
• “Historicizing Stonewall: Riots, Resistance, and Revolution,” Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, New York City, June 2019.
• Keynote: “Historicizing Stonewall: Riots, Resistance, and Revolution,” Stonewall at 50 and Beyond Conference, Univ. Paris Est Créteil, France, June 2019.
• “Philadelphia Freedom: Gay Patriots, Protesters, and Profiteers at the U.S. Bicentennial,” Bryn Mawr College, Oct. 2017; San Francisco State Univ. LGBTQ Studies Series, April 2016.
• “Historical Perspectives on U.S. LGBT Rights and Freedoms,” National Defense Univ. International Fellows Program, GLBT History Museum (San Francisco), Feb. 2017; Feb. 2016.
• “Sex with Neighbors: Canada and Canadians in the ‘U.S.’ Homophile Press,” Simon Fraser Univ., Jan. 2015; Univ. Massachusetts at Amherst, Nov. 2013.
• “Canonizing Homophile Sexual Respectability: Archives, History, and Memory,” Library Company of Philadelphia and Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Oct. 2014.
• “Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement: Historical Perspectives,” Mark Gordon Lecture, LGBT Center, Univ. Pennsylvania, Oct. 2014; History Dept., York Univ., Jan. 2013; Ohio Univ., Oct. 2012; Ohio State Univ., Oct. 2012.
• “Autobiographical Reflections on Historical Studies,” Graduate Seminar Series, Graduate Program in Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies, York Univ., Oct. 2013.
• “Exclusivity and Homogeneity in York’s Inclusivity and Diversity Survey,” Workshop on Queer and Trans Academics, York Univ. Faculty Assoc. Queer Caucus, Apr. 2013.
• Endnote: “‘We Demand’: A Conference Snapshot,” “We Demand”: History/Sex/Activism in Canada Conference, Vancouver, Aug. 2011.
• “The U.S. Supreme Court’s Sexual Revolution? Sex, Marriage, and Reproduction from Griswold to Roe,” Centre for the Study of the United States, Univ. Toronto, Jan. 2011; Research Matters, York Univ., Nov. 2010; Univ. Maine–Orono, Oct. 2010; Colby College, Oct. 2010; Graduate Program in Women’s Studies, York Univ., Feb. 2009; Sexualities Workshop, York Univ., Nov. 2005; Temple Univ., Oct. 2004; Univ. California, Santa Barbara, Feb. 2004; Univ. Maine-Orono, Feb. 2004; Duke Univ., Feb. 2002; American Bar Foundation, Oct. 2001; American History Faculty Seminar, York Univ., Oct. 2001; Case Western Reserve Univ., Oct. 2001; Queen’s Univ., Mar. 2001; Univ. Missouri-Columbia Law School, Apr. 2000; Franklin and Marshall College, Apr. 1999.
• “LGBT History’s Successes and Failures,” Historian’s Craft, Graduate Program in History, York Univ., Mar. 2010.
• Keynote: “Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement,” St. Mary’s College Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Colloquium, St. Mary’s City, Maryland, Mar. 2010.
• Plenary Speaker: “Inventing Rights and Wrongs: Rulings, Reception, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Sexual Revolution,” Schlesinger Library Summer Seminar on Gender History–“Sequels to the 1960s,” Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, June 2008.
• “The Cultural Turn,” Department of History Research Series, York Univ., Feb. 2008.
• “Inventing Rights and Wrongs: Rulings, Reception, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Sexual Revolution,” Rutgers Univ., Dec. 2005; Colby College, Mar. 2004.
• “Sexual Freedom v. LGBT Civil Rights: Activism, Archives, and Academia,” LGBT Center, Univ. Pennsylvania, Oct. 2004.
• “Communities of Desire: The Past, Present, and Future of U.S. Queer History,” Univ. Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Mar. 2002.
• “Scholarship, Teaching, Activism, and Lived Experience,” Out at York Symposium, York Univ., Feb. 2002.
• “Writing the Lesbian and Gay City,” Univ. Toronto, May 2001.
• “The Queering of Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay History,” Swarthmore College, Mar. 2001.
• “Philadelphia Gay Sex Radicals and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Sexual Revolution, 1965-1973,” Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Academic Union, Univ. Pennsylvania, Dec. 2000.
• “City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves,” Univ. Missouri-Columbia, Apr. 2000; Univ. Toronto, Sept. 1999.
• Keynote: “Crossing Borders: Memories, Dreams, Fantasies, and Nightmares of the History Job Market,” New Frontiers Conference, York Univ., Apr. 1999.
• “From Independence Hall to the Black Panthers’ Constitutional Convention: Nationalisms in Gay, Lesbian, and Black Politics, 1969-1970,” Beloit College, Feb. 1999.
• “Your Place or Mine?: Lesbian and Gay Geographies in Postwar Philadelphia History,” Harvard Univ., Nov. 1997; Florida International Univ./Univ. Miami/Wolfsonian Museum, Mar. 1997; Women’s Studies Colloquium, Colby College, Oct. 1996.
• “‘Birthplace of the Nation’: Imagining Lesbian and Gay Communities in Philadelphia, 1969-70,” Wesleyan Univ., Apr. 1997; Mellon Seminar in the Humanities, Bryn Mawr College, Nov. 1995.
• “Lesbian and Gay Politics in the City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves, 1960-69,” Lafayette College, Apr. 1997.
• “The City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves,” Cincinnati Seminar on the City, Apr. 1996; Philadelphia Lesbian/Gay Academic Union, Dec. 1992.
• “Lesbian and Gay Neighborhood Development in Postwar Philadelphia,” Univ. Pennsylvania Urban Studies Workshop, Dec. 1995.
• “Birthplace of a Nation: Sex, Race, and Nationalism in Philadelphia After Stonewall, 1969-70,” Gay and Lesbian Studies Workshop, Univ. Chicago, Jan. 1995.