Exhibit Will Commemorate Human Rights in America

Thursday, September 24, 2009

OSU Gender and Women’s Studies program co-hosts gay rights celebration.

(Sept. 24, 2009, STILLWATER, Okla.) – To commemorate four decades of struggling for human rights, a historical exhibit of “40 Years after Stonewall:  The Gay Movement in America” will be on display Oct. 5 to Oct. 9 in the Peggy V. Helmerich Browsing Room of the Edmon Low Library at Oklahoma State University.

Made possible in part by a grant from the Oklahoma Humanities Council, the week-long event begins with a panel discussion at 7 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 5, in Room 270 of the Student Union. Humanities scholars will discuss the origins and impact of this exhibit of images and artifacts from gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender movements since the 1960s.

Speakers will include Jean-Nickolaus Tretter, the curator and founder of the Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies, Laura Belmonte, associate professor of history and director of American Studies at OSU, and Angie Piehl, assistant professor of art at OSU.

“We are so lucky to have this big, beautiful exhibit come to Stillwater,” said Carol Mason, director of Gender and Women’s Studies, “and even luckier to have the founder of the archive come and talk about it.” Tretter oversees the collection, which is housed in the Anderson Special Collections Library at the University of Minnesota.

Designed to celebrate the anniversary of the launching of the modern gay rights movement in the United States, “40 Years after Stonewall” refers to the early morning of June 28, 1969, when New York City patrons of a bar called the Stonewall Inn fought back after years of harassment and police raids on gay establishments.

The exhibit and auxiliary events are sponsored by Women’s Programs of the Office of Institutional Diversity, the student-led group SODA (Sexual Orientation Diversity Association), and Gender and Women’s Studies, which is an academic program in the College of Arts and Sciences at OSU.

To learn more, visit http://www.womensprograms.okstate.edu/eventscalendar.html or phone Jen Macken, coordinator of Women’s Programs at (405) 744-2127.