WGSS Spring Symposia Series

Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers

Anne Balay, PhD, Indiana University Northwest

5:30pm
Wed, April 16th
Babbidge Library, Class of 1947 Classroom 
University of Connecticut, Storrs Campus

Join as as Dr. Balay discusses her new book, Steel Closets, published by the University of North Carolina Press.

Even as substantial legal and social victories are being celebrated within the gay rights movement, much of working-class America still exists outside the current narratives of gay liberation. In Steel Closets, Anne Balay draws on oral history interviews with forty gay, lesbian, and transgender steelworkers, mostly living in northwestern Indiana, to give voice to this previously silent and invisible population. She presents powerful stories of the intersections of work, class, gender, and sexual identity in the dangerous industrial setting of the steel mill. The voices and stories captured by Dr. Balay--by turns alarming, heroic, funny, and devastating--challenge contemporary understandings of what it means to be queer and shed light on the incredible homophobia and violence faced by many: nearly all of Dr. Balay's narrators remain closeted at work, and many have experienced harassment, violence, or rape. 

 

Accessibility: Ground floor entrance and elevator to room's level. 

For more information, contact: Laura Mauldin at laura.mauldin@uconn.edu