Michael Hames-Garcia, director of the Center for the Study of Women in Society and professor of ethnic studies, will discuss a new book project on whiteness and homosexuality this Wednesday, Dec. 3.

The talk, at noon in the Jane Grant Conference Room in Hendricks Hall, is free and open to the public. Brown bag lunches are welcome.

Hames-Garcia will talk about whiteness and the literary construction of homosexuality between World War II and the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion. The manuscript examines works by authors ranging from Gore Vidal to James Baldwin and explores the conflation of homosexuality and whiteness that developed during the period.

“Rather than a collateral effect of latent white supremacy or disregard for the lives of queer people of color, I argue that this conflation — perhaps most surprising in the work of African American author James Baldwin and Chicano writer John Rechy — is the result of a deliberate, if implicit, process of making homosexuality legible, representing it as not pathological, and garnering sympathy for emerging political claims on its behalf,” he said.