This May, at our End of Year/Welcome Summer party, QUNY elected a new student representative
to the CLAGS Board. Robert Kaplan’s term on the Board ended this year, and he will now
be devoting his energies to his dissertation. Robert was instrumental in developing the Annual
Queer CUNY conference, and worked with CLAGS over a number of years advocating for the
development of the Concentration in Lesbian and Gay/Queer Studies. Fortunately, he will be available
to act as a consultant and general fairy godmother to QUNY and queer organizing within the CUNY
system although he will no longer be officially involved.
In his place, QUNY elected Peter Penrose, a student in Ancient History at the Graduate Center. In
addition to being active in QUNY, Peter is a member of the New York City Lesbian and Gay History
Seminar and the Committee for Lesbian and Gay History. Welcome Peter!
In February, QUNY (the Graduate Center’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer
student group) held a social. QUNY hosts a social every semester in the Doctoral Students Council
(DSC) student lounge, with wine, food, music and great conversation. In April, QUNY showed “Living
with Pride: Ruth Ellis at 100,” a film by Yvonne Welbon celebrating the life of Ruth Ellis, who was often
described as the oldest, out African-American lesbian. For more information on QUNY events, please
contact Deborah Gambs at dgambs@gc.cuny.edu.
Next Fall, QUNY and CLAGS will be jointly surveying students at the Graduate Center to find out
how they feel about the current course offerings in LGBTQ studies, and how students would like to see
queer work further integrated into their coursework in general. Through the survey, we hope to
determine the amount of interest among students in Lesbian and Gay/Queer Studies, and present this
data to the faculty and Curriculum Committee as QUNY and CLAGS work together to move the
Concentration toward a Certificate Program.
