Pink Precariat: LGBT Workers in the Shadow of Civil Rights

Looking at LGBT rights and identity in the workplace

by Leda Fisher '19

Dickinson will host legal and political historian Margot Canaday for a discussion of the workplace and queer identity creation in the lecture, “Pink Precariat: LGBT Workers in the Shadow of Civil Rights,” on Wednesday, Feb. 21, at 7 p.m. in the Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium.

Canaday identifies the workplace as an influential site for the historical formation of queer identity. She argues that we should consider how lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers in the 1950s and 1960s negotiated their expression of self. Canaday further examines how the workplace can and should be treated as a space where queer identity was established and molded after World War II.

Canaday is associate professor of history at Princeton University. She is also the author of The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth Century America, which won several awards, including the Organization of American Historians' Ellis Hawley Prize and the Committee on LGBT History's John Boswell Prize. Her research focuses on the history of sexuality, work and labor, the American state and legal history.

The event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the departments of English, American studies and women’s, gender & sexuality studies. It is the first event in the Clarke Forum’s spring 2018 semester theme, Citizen/Refugee.

Learn more

• Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues
• “At the Heart of Who We Are”
• Department of English
• Department of American Studies
• Department of Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies
• Latest News

Published February 13, 2018