by Cameron Neale
Congratulations to department alum Dex Dexter ‘24, the 2025 recipient of the LGBTQ+ History Association’s Joan Nestle Prize!
The Joan Nestle Prize recognizes an outstanding example of undergraduate research and writing on LGBTQ+ history, which this year was Dexter’s senior thesis, “Writing a Road Home: North Carolina’s Gay and Lesbian Periodicals and the Creation of Proud Gay and Southern Communities.”
“The paper displayed exemplary research and was impressively written, using structuring vignettes and rich readings of archival sources to invite the reader into lesbian literary communities, radical fairie publications, and responses to anti-gay violence and the HIV/AIDS crisis of the early 1980s,” the LGBTQ+ History Association wrote in its announcement.
Receiving the award came as a surprise to Dexter, who had no idea they were up for consideration.
Dexter’s thesis was nominated by their senior thesis advisor, Dr. Erik Gellman, and second reader, PhD candidate Hooper Schultz.
“Hooper recommended to Professor Gellman that they nominate my work, and I didn’t know that,” Dexter said. “I got an email… from Hooper saying ‘Hey, Dex… you’ve won this award. Congratulations.’”
The project began with the desire to place LGBTQ+ history in the context of North Carolina’s past and understand how a community formed in the state.
“I can figure out how things happen with Stonewall. I can figure out how things happened in San Francisco,” Dexter said. “But how did that translate to North Carolina?”
Through their research, Dexter realized the role of newspapers in community building among LGBTQ+ people in NC. Through examining five publications released between 1975 and 1985, Dexter explores the framework of “imagined communities” in creating a sense of place and belonging among the state’s LGBTQ+ people.
By analyzing artistic and written work in these newspapers and periodicals, Dexter argues North Carolina’s LGBTQ+ people created a sense of identity.
“I did a lot of tie-ins with imagined conceptions of nation and how you’re building up these identity formations through this print text that’s then put out into the world,” they said. “Then people can read it and can send stuff back in, so they get to contribute.”
Dexter said it was difficult to choose what to write about once they had tapped this resource of newspapers. Where once they had thought there was not anything out there about the state’s LGBTQ+ history, there was now too much to imagine including in the final thesis.
“Getting to know that, I think, is such a reward in itself,” Dexter said. “Being like, I do understand a lot of these things better now.
“And it’s pretty cool to win prizes, too.”
Dexter is now a first-year law student at the UNC School of Law. They hope to pursue a career in LGBTQ+-focused policy work or housing law.