"New Schools of Thought"

"New Schools of Thought: LGBT Studies Programs Take Their Place on American College Campuses" by Vince Catrone reprinted with permission from Frontiers Magazine, Vol. 20, Issue 3 (2001).

When 19-year-old Vianey Ramirez arrived at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) as an undeclared student, she knew she was interested in gender issues and expected to take classes in the women's studies and sociology departments. "Every time you register for courses, you go through the course listings and see what fulfills graduation requirements," she explained. But browsing through the listings, the openly lesbian Ramirez found something that truly surprised her--a list of courses related to UCR's minor program in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender studies.

With classes like "Passing & Mimicry," "Gender & Sexuality in Early America," and "Men & Masculinity," UCR is one of a small but growing number of undergraduate institutions that have created a specific academic program for the study and research of LGBT issues.

In the most pure sense, the American university system has offered LGBT-themed coursework almost from the founding of the country's first colleges. The study of classical mythology and philosophy, research in ancient Greek and Roman history, and, later, the exploration of famous gay writers like Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman, as well as coursework on the Suffragette movement and the early feminists, all touched on issues of homosexuality and gender, even if students and instructors weren't completely aware of it.

Slowly but surely individual professors began to offer courses with clear and specific LGBT themes. But with the advent of the gender equality movement, things really began to change. "[LGBT Studies] exist as an academic program as a consequence of women's liberation and the consciousness of women," explains James A. Schultz, the director of UCLA's LGBT studies program. "There is this nostalgia for the '60s, but the '70s is actually the decade for activism for the lesbian [and] gay movement of real substantial accomplishment."

As women, Latino, African-American, Asian-American and Native American students began to organize and demand that colleges respond to their needs both inside and outside the classroom, the LGBT consciousness movement was just taking hold. According to Duke University professor John G. Younger, who keeps a Web site that tracks the development of LGBT Studies, several factors sowed the seeds for the burgeoning number of academic programs on the nation's campuses. The acceptance of women's and ethnic studies programs by the academic community; the discussion of LGBT issues in mainstream society such as gays in the military and sexual discrimination; and the increased use of the Internet all helped make LGBT academic programs a reality.

Younger argues that programs have formed in similar ways on different campuses; once there is a critical mass of professors teaching LGBT-themed coursework across different disciplines, and there are enough students asking for these courses, sympathetic administrators will step in and approve organizing committees, which lead to certificate or minor-granting programs. Princeton, Brown, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison are just some of the schools that have organizing committees and oversee LGBT classes. Some schools offer LGBT-specific certificates from related departments such as Stanford's feminist studies program and Duke's program in the studies of sexuality.

Although programs are being developed all over the country, California is ground zero for the LGBT studies movement. San Francisco City College is the first school to offer a bachelor's degree in gay and lesbian studies, while UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University both offer minors. In the Los Angeles area, UCR and UCLA's minor programs are complemented by the work being done at the University of Southern California (USC). These different LGBT programs, however, are as unique as the schools themselves.

Schultz, a professor in UCLA's Germanic languages department with a specialty in medieval literature, was recruited from the University of Illinois in Chicago partially on his work in LGBT studies. He sees the program at UCLA, which was approved in 1997, as constantly evolving. When he handed me his card after our interview, he noted that the "T" for "Transgendered" had recently been added with a pen into the original "LGB" program moniker. "You can't do it [LGBT Studies] responsibly without looking at how it fits into the broader perspective," he says.

UCLA has a long history of LGBT research, particularly in the sciences. In the 1950s, psychologist Evelyn Hooker did groundbreaking research revealing that gay men were leading relatively well-adjusted lives and showed no difference in their mental health from straight men, while Robert Stoller's sex-reassignment research was some of the first work done on the subject. For UCLA undergraduates today, the program boasts classes from the fields of political science, history, literature, women's studies and Chicano studies.

"We have a music course that has them sitting in the aisles," Schultz says, "and a sociology class that always has 70 to 100 people. It satisfies a requirement and answers questions students have. There are a group of students coming to these classes who know professionally they will have to deal with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people."

Schultz also notes that there has been some tension in the institutionalization of LGBT studies programs. "The question is should we be doing what we are doing, or should we insist that this work be part of other studies. We don't want to let other departments off the hook. But it becomes harder and harder to discount GLBT studies the more established these programs get."

George Haggerty, committee chair at the LGBT studies program at UCR, points out that different campuses will have to meet specific challenges when it comes to setting up their programs. "Riverside is a working-class setting, and is less urbane than other areas," he explains, "and in that sense our work has more effect. For students who have taken these courses, there is a family context in the local community."

The UCR program, which pre-dates UCLA's minor by one year, faced some loud criticism from the community's conservative state legislators, including Assemblyman Bruce Thompson, who noted in a local paper that if someone wanted to learn about gay studies they should "go off to San Francisco for six months."

Luckily for the students at the school, faculty and staff support was nearly unanimous. Additionally, there was support from the local community, which bolstered the program's legitimacy and helped fulfill the school's mandate to serve the region. With approval of the program, though, came responsibility. "One of the things we insisted on was academic rigor," Haggerty says. "The classes aren't easy. We are not just here to make [LGBT] students feel good."

Ryan Daniel, a senior in the UCR program, agrees. "Not only are they rigorous, they are some of the hardest classes I ever had to take. Any queer studies class asks you to question everything you have ever been told. There are so many different concepts. It is all up for grabs."

The interdisciplinary approach at UCR has become a model for other colleges. "This is a good way for a small school with limited resources to develop a program," Haggerty explains. "We have shared our proposal with other people. We have had lots of requests from other campuses."

In terms of academic program development, both the UCLA and UCR programs are in their infancy compared to the more established fields of study sitting beside them on campus. Schultz and Haggerty note that their respective schools are looking to add lectures, symposia and classes that fulfill their programs' course of study but also remain academically challenging. "I think ideally there should be graduate work," Haggerty says, "And that is one thing the UC campuses can do--develop an inter-campus consortium. This would allow for a graduate-level program."

For students like Daniel, who is interested in exploring LGBT studies on a graduate level, further study can happen without waiting for the UC system to set up a program. USC, which offers undergraduate-level courses through its gender studies department, also allows graduate-level students with specific areas of study to research LGBT issues while still focusing on a more traditional discipline.

Walter Williams, a professor in the gender studies and anthropology departments at USC, thinks the school's approach allows not only for more detailed study, but remains much more practical for students looking for a career in academia. "UCLA put a lot of time into the GLBT minor," Williams explained, "but at USC the approach was 'Let's, instead of putting all our energies into an undergraduate major, put it into graduate-level research.' Students from any department can take these classes. They don't have to major in it. I had one graduate student who was getting his Ph.D. in anthropology, and he did his dissertation on homosexuality in Japan. He was hired by the University of Akron [in Ohio] to teach both anthropology and Asian studies, but he also has the added element of GLBT research."

USC's focus on graduate-level work seems natural if one considers the school's affiliation with the ONE Institute & Archives, the world's largest library on LGBT heritage and concerns. Housed in a former USC fraternity house, the ONE Institute is the oldest ongoing gay and lesbian organization in the Western Hemisphere. The institute has become a beacon for scholars all over the world who do not have the resources they need to continue their work.

The study done at these universities can often reverberate in a surprising and beneficial way. In 1997, USC and the ONE Institute hosted Wan Yan Hai, a Chinese researcher who did work exploring the declassification of homosexuality as a disease by most Western countries' psychiatric associations. His work lead to the Chinese Psychiatric Association decision in April to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses, a powerful message to the country's psychiatrists, and ultimately 1.2 billion Chinese citizens.

Schultz sees the growth of graduate-level programs and increased research in LGBT studies as a vital component for any program. "The government is not supporting this research, but there is a strong argument to give money to universities to fund these programs. We need to study the gay kids on the streets. This kind of study adds weight to the public discourse," he says.

In the meantime, students like Daniel and Ramirez are doing what all good college students should be doing: expanding their intellectual boundaries and allowing academic study to increase their own understanding of themselves and the world around them. Luckily for them, they are at schools where that exploration includes study through an LGBT perspective

For more information on these programs, see the following Websites:

UC Riverside: http://www.catalog.ucr.edu/current/lgbs.html
UCLA: http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/lgbts/
USC: http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/gsp/
ONE Institute: http://www.oneinstitute.org/