David Palmer
Ph.D. Student (ABD)
palm@email.unc.edu
Major Field: Modern U.S. History
Other Fields: History of Sexuality; Cultural History
Advisor: John Kasson
Research Interests: My dissertation explores how
various American-based gay and lesbian periodicals
represented notions of community and difference as matters of both
principle and political strategy during the last third of the twentieth
century. It aims to show that the ways in which these notions
were defined has helped determine the shaping of “gay” norms and values
and whose interests within a designated group were addressed and whose
interests were marginalized or ignored. It focuses on responses
to four historical moments: the framing of the concept of “gay
liberation” in the early 1970s, fights for anti-discrimination
legislation in the late 1970s, efforts to attain improved health care
for people with AIDS in the mid 1980s, and the same-sex marriage
debates in the early 1990s.