***Event will be held on campus with a remote option available***

In the mid-twentieth century, gay life flourished in American cities even as the state repression of queer communities reached its peak. Anna Lvovsky chronicles this painful story, tracing the tactics used to criminalize, profile, and suppress gay life from the 1930s through the 1960s, and the surprising controversies those tactics often inspired in court. She suggests that the vice squads’ campaigns stood at the center of live debates about not only the law’s treatment of queer people, but also the limits of ethical policing, the authority of experts, and the nature of sexual difference itself—debates that had often unexpected effects on the gay community’s rights and freedoms. Lvovsky will examine those battles and consider their effect on the regulation of queer life and disputes about police power that continue today.

Part of the Urban History Speaker Series. Cosponsored by Temple University’s Feinstein Center for American Jewish History and the History Department. 

For remote access, register via Zoom