The Queerness of Home:
Gender, Sexuality & the Politics of Domesticity after World War II
From the Stonewall riots in 1969 to the ACT UP protests of the 1980s and ’90s, histories of queer and trans politics have almost exclusively centered on public activism.
Vider shifts the focus inward, showing that the intimacy of domestic space has been equally crucial to the history of postwar LGBTQ life.
Honorable mention, John Hope Franklin Prize, best book in American Studies, 2021
Honorable mention, Alan Bray Memorial Prize, best book in LGBTQ literary and cultural studies, 2021
Finalist, Shapiro Prize, outstanding first scholarly monograph in American history, 2021/2022
Recent and Upcoming
“Mundane Matters: Domesticity, Everyday Life, and the Futures of Queer History,” concluding roundtable, with Heike Bauer, Matt Cook, and Tone Hellesund, Mundane Queer History Conference, University of Bergen, Norway, May 2026
Fantasizing Design: Phyllis Birkby Builds Lesbian Feminist Architecture, co-curated by Stephen Vider and M.C. Overholt, May to September 2025 at the Center for Architecture in New York
Vider was featured on Kitchen Sisters Present in a segment on Phyllis Birkby, originally recorded for the podcast New Angle: Voice
Preview “Queering the Domestic,” a special issue of GLQ co-edited by Lauren Gutterman, Martin Manalansan, and Stephen Vider
Watch a video of Vider discussing The Queerness of Home at Cornell University
Watch videos of Vider in conversation with Greta LaFleur at the Harvard Bookstore and with Peter Terzian at Greenlight Bookstore.
Order The Queerness of Home: Gender, Sexuality, and the Politics of Domesticity After World War II.
Stephen Vider is a social, cultural, and political historian.
His research, teaching, and public scholarship explore the history of gender, sexuality, home, and family in the United States after World War II.
Vider’s writing has appeared in a range of academic journals and anthologies as well as newspapers and magazines including the New York Times and Slate.
As a public scholar, Vider has curated exhibitions for the Museum of the City of New York and the Center for Architecture. He has also consulted on a wide range of public history projects including exhibitions, walking tours, films, and musicals.
Vider is Associate Professor of History and co-director of Gender and Sexuality Studies at Bryn Mawr College, where he also advises in History of Art. He was previously Associate Professor of History and founding director of the Public History Initiative at Cornell University.