One hundred years ago, New York City was in the midst of the so-called Pansy (Queer) Craze, which catalyzed the raucous eroticism of the Jazz Age. Prohibition revelers flocked to see queer performers at the Astor Hotel and the Cotton Club. Broadway stars rubbed elbows with Harlem Renaissance luminaries at the Hamilton Lodge Drag Ball. Shortly thereafter, there was a crackdown, not unlike the one alt-right conservatives are mounting against LGBTQ+ communities today. It’s a familiar pattern, characterized by advances in social rights followed by reactionary efforts to dial them back.

“Queer Craze 2.0: An Intergenerational Conversation and Centennial Celebration” will focus on historical parallels between the 1920s and the 2020s, using Margaret Vandenburg’s new novel, Craze, as a springboard. Then, as now, New York was teeming with gender-bending people from all walks of life. The two conversationalists will be Margaret Vandenburg (novelist, playwright, academic) and Temi George (writer, sound artist, Lesbian Herstory Archives affiliate). If past is prologue, revisiting the Queer Craze might help us navigate current culture wars.

Margaret Vandenburg is a novelist, playwright, and essayist whose new novel, Craze, ventures into the queer speakeasies and drag balls that catalyzed the raucous eroticism of the Roaring Twenties. Her previous novels include An American in Paris, a romp through the sapphic salons of Gertrude Stein and Natalie Barney, and The Home Front, a portrait of a family facing autism. Her plays include Roe v. Wade 2.0, the centerpiece of a theater-based reproductive rights coalition, and Belly of the Beast, a finalist for the Drama League Award for Outstanding Digital
Theater. Having completed her Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, Vandenburg spent her academic career as a Senior Lecturer at Barnard College, specializing in modernism, postmodernism, and gender studies.

Temi George is a writer and sound artist. She is involved at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, where she has worked with the newspaper, periodical, and photo collections. She studied English and philosophy at Barnard College. She is working on a chapbook of micro-poetry that manipulates language from Emily Dickinson’s letters to Susan Gilbert Dickinson. As a child, George would often stare at the sun. She once saw a sign that read “For blind use only” above some braille on a train ticket machine near Dallas. “If I touch this braille,” she thought, “I will go
blind.” She did not touch braille for a long time as a result. If she was that concerned about going blind, why did she stare at the sun? She is pursuing a career in psychiatry, in part, to figure this out.

This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.

Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.

Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $10.

All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.

We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @BGSQD