PRESENTATION OF THE CONFERENCE

Welcome to the website for the international conference « Stonewall at 50 and Beyond: Interrogating the Legacy and Memory of the 1969 Riots», organized by the research group IMAGER EA 3958 from the Université Paris Est Créteil, the research group IRSSO UMR 7170 from the Université Paris-Dauphine, and the research groupe IRIS (UMR8156 - U997).

In the night of June 27, 1969, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a Greenwich Village bar on Christopher Street in New York, refused to endure yet another occurrence of the police harassment they routinely faced. For five days and nights, the neighborhood was the scene of a confrontation between rioters and the police. In the following weeks and months, this uprising reinforced emerging liberation movements that coalesced into a diverse political force. The events were celebrated the following year and have since generally been presented as “the birth of the gay liberation movement” that is commemorated in today’s yearly LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) pride marches.

On the fiftieth anniversary of Stonewall, this conference aims to shed critical light on this major event and its effects on the development of LGBTQ mobilizations. It seeks to investigate the processes of memorialization, as well as the political legacy and the cultural and activist representations of Stonewall. The program will include presentations from academics to enable thoughts and discussions.

You will find the Call for Papers here. You can see the program here and find abstracts (by day, by speaker or by workshop).