Timothy Stewart-Winter
Born:
Connection to Illinois: Stewart-Winter lived in Chicago from 2002 to 2009 and was a member of the organization Queer to the Left. He received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago Biography: Timothy Stewart-Winter is the author of “Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics”. “Queer Clout” is an important contribution to our LGBT past by placing Chicago front and center in the story of the modern LGBT movement. Chronicling the evolution of LGBT activism in Chicago and emphasizing the history of police harassment, the book painstakingly explains how Chicago’s LGBT community went from being vilified by politicians to becoming a powerful voting bloc with influence on local government. In his research, historian Stewart-Winter conducted interviews with numerous activists and members of Chicago’s LGBT communities. “Queer Clout” draws on oral histories and archival records, including those of undercover vice and police red squad investigators. In addition, he considered previously unexamined interviews by midcentury social scientists studying gay life and the newly available papers of politicians, activists, and city agencies. Stewart-Winter lived in Chicago from 2002 to 2009 and was a member of the organization Queer to the Left. He received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago and his B.A. in history from Swarthmore College. He has been the recipient of fellowships from ACLS/Mellon Foundation and Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History. His writing has appeared in the Journal of American History, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Journal of Urban History, Gender & History, the Journal of the History of Sexuality, Dissent, and Slate, among others. He has been interviewed about Queer Clout on Chicago Tonight (WTTW TV) and Morning Shift (WBEZ radio). He has also been interviewed on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. Stewart-Winter is associate professor of U.S. history at Rutgers University – Newark and co-directs the Queer Newark Oral History Project. He was inducted into The Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame in 2017.
Awards:
- Queer Clout 2017 John Boswell Prize, awarded by the American Historical Association’s Committee on LGBT History, for outstanding book in the field of LGBT history
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothystewartwinter
Twitter: https://twitter.com/timothysw
Web: https://sasn.rutgers.edu/about-us/faculty-staff/timothy-stewart-winter
WorldCat: http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=Timothy++Stewart-Winter
Selected Titles
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Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics ISBN: 081222406X OCLC: 909538753 University of Pennsylvania Press 2017 In postwar America, the path to political power for gays and lesbians led through city hall. By the late 1980s, politicians and elected officials, who had originally sought political advantage from raiding gay bars and carting their patrons off to jail, were pursuing gays and lesbians aggressively as a voting bloc—not least by campaigning in those same bars. Gays had acquired power and influence. They had clout. Tracing the gay movement's trajectory since the 1950s from the closet to the corridors of power, Queer Clout is the first book to weave together activism and electoral politics, shifting the story from the coastal gay meccas to the nation's great inland metropolis. Timothy Stewart-Winter challenges the traditional division between the homophile and gay liberation movements, and stresses gay people's and African Americans' shared focus on police harassment. He highlights the crucial role of black civil rights activists and political leaders in offering white gays and lesbians not only a model for protest but also an opening to join an emerging liberal coalition in city hall. The book draws on diverse oral histories and archival records spanning half a century, including those of undercover vice and police red squad investigators, previously unexamined interviews by midcentury social scientists studying gay life, and newly available papers of activists, politicians, and city agencies. As the first history of gay politics in the post-Stonewall era grounded in archival research, Queer Clout sheds new light on the politics of race, religion, and the AIDS crisis, and it shows how big-city politics paved the way for the gay movement's unprecedented successes under the nation's first African American president. |