Queer Eye for the History Guy

Think of a Harvard history professor, and the first thing that comes to mind might be a stodgy, Exeter-bred Brit sporting a tweed jacket, suede elbow patches, and a bowtie. Timothy P. McCarthy ’93, Quincy House tutor and style guru, and Hist. and Lit. and Women, Gender, and Sexuality (WGS) lecturer, offers something totally different. But McCarthy isn’t just revolutionary in his clothing choices. He’s also helping change the way we look at history by teaching a type of course never before available at Harvard.

For the first time ever, students can take a class on the history of “queer” culture in the United States. Called WGS 1151: “Sex, Rights, and Stereotypes: ‘Queer’ Culture in the United States from Stonewall to Gay Marriage,” McCarthy’s course will cover the rise of gay liberation, the AIDS crisis, religion and homosexuality, gays in the military, the trans-movement, and the gay marriage debate.

Students seem to be welcoming this new course with open arms. Ryan R. Thoreson ’07, who shopped the class and is the co-chair of the BGLSTA, wrote in a email that the course was “an important addition, because it’s a history that needs to be told and retold for a more complete understanding of history in the U.S. at large.”

McCarthy said that of the 40 to 50 students who shopped the course, many would self-identify as queer. But students looking to bare their souls and explore the inner workings of their wounded psyches should look elsewhere.

“I made it very clear that this [course] is not a queer therapy session,” said McCarthy.