The campus Gregg and Chauncey will soon be leaving…

Yesterday, we were tipped a link to a story in the Yale Daily News about George Chauncey and Ronald Gregg, two Yale professors who will be moving to New York City next fall. Chauncey is a history professor specializing in 20th century American gay and lesbian history, and Gregg, his husband, is a professor of American studies and film and media studies and serves as director of film programming at Yale’s Whitney Humanities Center. The couple was well-loved among their colleagues and students.

Chauncey is well known at Yale and beyond for his work in LGBTQ+ studies. His book, “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940”, has won many awards. He’s also contributed to over 30 gay rights legal cases, two of which are the same-sex marriage cases the Supreme Court decided in 2013. Kathryn Lofton, a fellow professor and friend of Chauncey’s at Yale, called him “the leader of gay history in America.” He’s currently working on a second book, then aims to set up international studies on the history of sexuality. Chauncey is moving to NYC partially for the sake of this project – Columbia has a larger internationals student population than Yale. Gregg is famous within his field as well, for his contributions to studies of LGBTQ+ film and aesthetics.

At Yale, Chauncey was popular for his lecture “U.S. Lesbian and Gay History”, abbreviated LesGay; it had over 300 students last semester. It’s unclear whether he’ll be able to teach a similar class here at Columbia, but whatever he does teach, it will most likely become very popular, very quickly.

Kale via Yale website