The Other Kind of Camp: Queer History as Environmental History

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

The Stonewall Riot and the first Earth Day occurred less than a year apart. However, the two events have seldom been understood together. Historians of the environment have largely ignored LGBTQ+ histories in their analyses. This session seeks to excavate the queer history of the environment. By doing so, this first-of-its-kind roundtable throws a brick: queer people have always been a part of environmental history.

This roundtable brings together a diverse gathering of scholars. Mars Plater will explore parks and gardens as cruising sites of nineteenth-century New York City. Focusing on the extractive, objectifying poetics of species description/identification, Aspen Brown will reflect on the treatment of plant bodies as botanical taxonomy became popularized in the American West from roughly 1890 to 1920. Megan Raby will discuss queer environmental biography and the life of Marston Bates, a biologist and author whose work questioned the nature of nature. Dawn Biehler will discuss the spatial overlap between migratory birds, bird-watching, and queer community gathering in New York City’s Central Park from 1900 to the 1950s. Sherri Sheu will discuss how the National Park Service policed queer spaces and behaviors from the Lavender Scare through the 1970s. Nicole Seymour will reflect on U.S. queer communities’ recent embrace of “plant parenthood,” identifying it as a reaction to the patriarchal, normative history of botany.

Sub Unit

• ASEH Annual Conference

Chair

• Sherri Sheu, Science History Institute

Moderator

• Sherri Sheu, Science History Institute

Presenters

• Mars Plater, UConn-Stamford

• Aspen Brown, Independent Scholar (shadysapling.com)

• Dawn Biehler, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

• Megan Raby, University of Texas at Austin

• Sherri Sheu, Science History Institute

• Nicole Seymour, Cal State Fullerton