Esther Newton

Term Professor of Women's Studies and American Culture Lecturer IV Ph.D. University of Chicago, Anthropology, 1968

Contact Information:
2231 Lane Hall
204 S. State St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1290
734.936.5762
734.647.4943

Email: enewt@umich.edu

Scholarly Interests: American Culture, gender and sexuality, LGBT Studies

Biography: Esther Newton is Term Professor of American Culture and Women's Studies.  She is also Professor of Anthropology and Kempner Distinguished Professor Emerita at Purchase College, SUNY.  She was a founder of the Lesbian and Gay Studies Program at Purchase College, the author of numerous articles and of Mother Camp:  Female Impersonators in America;  Cherry Grove, Fire Island:  60 Years in America's First Gay and Lesbian Town and Margaret Mead Made Me Gay:  Personal Essays, Public Ideas.  The last two won the Ruth Benedict Award of the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists of the American Anthropological Association.  Her next project is a memoir, My Butch Career. She is a Michigan alum, class of '62.

Publications:

Mother Camp:  Female Impersonators in America (University of Chicago Press).

Cherry Grove, Fire Island:  60 Years in America's First Gay and Lesbian Town (Beacon Press 1993).

Margaret Mead Made Me Gay:  Personal Essays, Public Ideas (Duke University Press 2000).