George Chauncey

George Chauncey is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University and director of the Columbia Research Initiative on the Global History of Sexualities. He works on the history of gender, sexuality, and the city, with a particular focus on American LGBTQ history. His book Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (Basic, 1994) won five major awards, including the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize and Merle Curti Prize from the Organization of American Historians. He also published Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today’s Debate over Gay Equality (Basic, 2005) and is completing a book on gay male culture, politics, and everyday life in the segregated neighborhoods of postwar New York City.

Before moving to Columbia in 2017, he taught at the University of Chicago and at Yale University, where he was awarded Yale’s prize for teaching excellence in the humanities. In 2022, the Library of Congress awarded him the John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity. Chauncey has been deeply committed to work in public history. He participated as an expert witness in more than 30 gay rights cases, including Romer v. Evans (1996), Lawrence v. Texas (2003), and the marriage equality cases decided by the Supreme Court in 2013 and 2015. He serves on the Board of Trustees of The New York Historical and was chief historian for their exhibition, The Gay Harlem Renaissance. He has served as historical consultant to several other public history projects, including exhibitions, lecture series, and teacher training programs at the New York Public Library, Chicago History Museum, and Library of Congress; and written on historical issues for The New York Times, The Atlantic, and other publications.

Chauncey received a B.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University.