Proposal for a History of the Fire Island Pines

OutHistory.org, the educational, not-for-profit lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer history website, is now actively seeking funds to hire a scholar to research and write a documented, illustrated history of the Fire Island Pines, to be published on the site in December 2011.

Founded and co-directed by noted gay historian Jonathan Ned Katz in 2007, OutHistory.org is a project of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the City University of New York (CLAGS). OutHistory.org boasts a unique structure, which combines rotating “exhibits” on specific topics in LGBTQ history, a growing archive of primary and scholarly materials, and user-generated historical articles. The site now receives almost 10,000 unique views every month, with over 30,000 page views.

OutHistory.org has sponsored a number of exhibits on the histories of specific LGBTQ communities, including Polk Street in San Francisco, Bronzeville in Chicago, and Philadelphia, as well as the post-Stonewall queer histories of communities in locales as varied as Atlanta, GA, Bloomington, IN, Iowa City, Corvallis, OR, and Seattle, WA. The proposed article on the large and vibrant gay communities of the Fire Island Pines will fill an important gap in knowledge, both for OutHistory.org and for queer historiography more generally. Cherry Grove and Provincetown are each subjects of scholarly studies, but there is little published research on the Pines.

The only researcher currently working on a history of the Pines is Robert Bonanno, who has set up a FaceBook page on the Fire Island Pines and its past. Mr. Bonanno has approached OutHistory.org to collaborate with historians in disseminating his findings, and his archive would be a major resource for the scholar selected to head this project.

Projected Outcomes

This article is intended to be comprehensive, and will cover at the very least the following topics:

• the history of police surveillance of homosexual men in the Pines

• the development of the Pines as an identifiable gay community

• changing relations between queer and nonqueer Pines residents

• gender, class, and race as dynamics in the Pines community

• the impact of AIDS on the Pines

• relations between summer home owners and year-round owners

• major real estate, tourism, and business development

• changing cultural relations between Cherry Grove and the Pines

The research and writing of the article will be supervised by historian Jonathan Ned Katz, Co-Director of OutHistory.org and co-ordinated by Lauren Gutterman, Ph.D. candidate in History at New York University, and the Co-ordinator of OutHistory.org.

To jumpstart this research OutHistory.org has already initiated a Bibliography and a Timeline on the History of the Fire Island Pines at:

Bibliography: History of the Fire Island Pines

and

Timeline: History of the Fire Island Pines

Budget

Many of the resources for this project – scanning equipment, video and digital cameras, audio equipment, etc. are already available to OutHistory.org via CLAGS. Lauren Gutterman, the OutHistory.org Co-ordinator, will be leading this project, assisted by a part-time researcher.

Project Co-ordinator $10,000

Part-time Researcher $5,000

Site maintenance $1,000

Travel $1,000

Photo permissions $500

Total $17,500

Donate online:

To donate on line to the funding of this history go to http://www.outhistory.org/wiki/Donate_online

Be sure to write “For OutHistory Fire Island Pines Project” in the memo line.

Donate by mail:

To donate by mail, please make your check to “CLAGS” (Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies). Be sure to write “For OutHistory Fire Island Pines Project” in the memo line. Mail check to:

CLAGS, Room 7115

Graduate Center

City University of New York

365 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10016-4309.

To learn more about this project contact Jonathan Ned Katz at: jnk123mac.com

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