OutHistory.org is a public website about

lesbian A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexu ...

gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late ...

bisexual Bisexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior toward both males and females. It may also be defined as the attraction to more than one gender, to people of both the same and different gender, or the attraction t ...

transgender A transgender (often shortened to trans) person has a gender identity different from that typically associated with the sex they were sex assignment, assigned at birth. The opposite of ''transgender'' is ''cisgender'', which describes perso ...

queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are non-heterosexual or non- cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against LGBTQ people in the late 19th century. From the late 1980s, queer activists began to ...

, and

heterosexual Heterosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between people of the opposite sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, heterosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions ...

history, with a non-exclusive focus on the US and Canada. Historians contributing to the site are especially interested in documenting under-represented histories and fostering historical research that contributes to positive social change. The site features over 200 digital exhibitions on various topics of LGBTQ+ history, built from primary sources and contextualized by brief texts written by guest scholars, who have curated each exhibition. A “bookshelf” features books written by historians on LGBTQ+ topics. OutHistory is increasingly being used by teachers to introduce students to primary sources and historical analysis relating to the LGBTQ+ past. The content of OutHistory.org is provided primarily by volunteers. OutHistory receives non-profit status as a project of th
Fund for the City of New York
The organization is funded by donations from users like you. To donate, see https://outhistory.org/donate. OutHistory.org was founded in 2004 by

Jonathan Ned Katz Jonathan Ned Katz (born 1938) is an American author of human sexuality who has focused on same-sex attraction and changes in the social organization of sexuality over time. His works focus on the idea, rooted in social constructionism, that the ...

, author of author of '' Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A.'' (1976),
Gay/Lesbian Almanac: A New Documentary
' (1983),

' (1995),

' (2001),
The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams
' (2021), and other works on the history of sexuality and gender. An initial grant in 2005 from the Zebra Fund at the Funding Exchange allowed Katz to begin the work. OutHistory.org was produced in its first four years by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS), located at the

City University of New York The City University of New York (CUNY, pronounced , ) is the Public university, public university system of Education in New York City, New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven ...

Graduate Center. The collaboration with CLAGS made possible a two-year, $100,000 grant by the

Arcus Foundation The Arcus Foundation is an international charitable foundation focused on issues related to LGBT rights, social justice, ape conservation, and environmental preservation. The foundation's stated mission is "to ensure that LGBT people and our fell ...

to hire Cidamon, a New York-based web design and development company to design the first site using open-source

MediaWiki MediaWiki is free and open-source wiki software originally developed by Magnus Manske for use on Wikipedia on January 25, 2002, and further improved by Lee Daniel Crocker,mailarchive:wikipedia-l/2001-August/000382.html, Magnus Manske's announc ...

software. The grant also funded the hiring of a part-time site director. The site was officially launched in 2008, with Lauren Jae Gutterman as the third project coordinator. A second Arcus grant supported content creation through the “Since Stonewall Local Histories Contest,” an effort to encourage community history research. Many of those submissions are now featured on this site. In 2011, John D'Emilio, Professor of History at the

University of Illinois, Chicago The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a public research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus established under the Universi ...

and an OutHistory director, led a redesign of the site using

Omeka Omeka (also known as Omeka Classic) is a free, open-source content management system for online digital collections. As a web application, it allows users to publish and exhibit cultural heritage objects, and extend its functionality with theme ...

, an open-source web publishing platform developed by the

Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM), formerly the Center for History and New Media (CHNM), is a research center specializing in digital history and information technology at George Mason University (GMU) in Fairfax County, V ...

George Mason University George Mason University (GMU) is a Public university, public research university in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. Located in Northern Virginia near Washington, D.C., the university is named in honor of George Mason, a Founding Father ...

. This new version of OutHistory launched in September 2013. In 2013, Claire Bond Potter, Professor of History at

The New School The New School is a Private university, private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for p ...

, joined Katz and D'Emilio as a director. D'Emilio and Potter continued serving as OutHistory directors until 2019
Randall Sell
an

served as directors from 2017 to 2020. Historia
Marc Stein
has been the director since January 1, 2023. Since 2023, OutHistory has been supported by a
Advisory Board
composed of academics and community-based historians. OutHistory.org has collaborated with other LGBTQ history sites, archives, newspapers, magazines, museum projects, and art galleries, as well as interested researchers. OutHistory.org has partnered with the

to award recipients of the LGBTQ Local Histories Contest for excellent contributions to OutHistory.org on local history topics. OutHistory.org was awarded the 2010 Allan Berube Prize in Public History by the Committee on LGBT History of the American Historical Association. In May 2016, OutHistory celebrated the 40th anniversary of Gay American History with a conference co-chaired by Claire Potter and Daniel Marshall, Senior Lecturer in Writing and Literature, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia, and managed by Kevin Ewing. The 2016 conference, co-sponsored by Arcus, CLAGS, and The New School, brought together hundreds of LGBTQ historians and activists to celebrate the state of our field and learn from one another. In 2023, OutHistory launched a Fellowship Program which supports the creation of digital exhibitions by fellows, who receive modest stipends for this work.

References

External links

*{{Official website, http://outhistory.org/ Internet properties established in 2004 Wiki communities LGBTQ organizations based in the United States History websites of the United States