The American Historical Association’s 2012 annual meeting will feature a diverse array of sessions on LGBTQ history, sponsored by the AHA Program Committee and the Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History, an AHA affiliate.

Offerings include discussions of the challenges and opportunities of LGBTQ oral history and public history, a curator-led tour of the Chicago History Museum’s new exhibit on LGBTQ life in the city, and sessions discussing queer history in the context of sexuality, gender, medicine, urban history, race, and military history.

Be sure to attend the open forum sponsored by the AHA LGBTQ Historians Task Force on Friday evening. Task force members will discuss the preliminary results of their survey of LGBTQ historians and historians who study LGBTQ topics and solicit feedback on plans for the final report they will submit to the AHA Council in June 2012.

Thursday, January 5

• Chicago History Museum: Out in Chicago
  LAC Tour 4
• The Politics of Respectability Reconsidered:
  Using the Framework of Respectability to Examine Southern Lesbian History
  CLGBTH Session 1, joint with the Coordinating Council for Women in History

Friday, January 6

• Doing Queer History in the Twenty-First Century
  AHA Session 49, CLGBTH Session 2
• The Queer Politics of Managing Youth and Sex in the 1920s United States
  CLGBTH Session 3
• LGBTQ Historians Task Force Open Forum
• Reception
  CLGBTH joint reception with the Coordinating Council for Women in History and the Peace History Society

Saturday, January 7

• Twentieth Century Queer and Artistic Bohemias
  AHA Session 129, CLGBTH Session 4
• Building Community, Combating Phobia, Part 1:
  The Media’s Narratives on “Patient Zero” and Gay Sex during the AIDS Epidemic
  CLGBTH Session 5
• Building Communities, Combating Phobia, Part II:
  LGBT Identity, Medicine, and Health
  CLGBTH Session 6
• Bodies of Evidence: Queer Oral History Methods
  CLGBTH Session 7
• Race-ing the Sexual Revolution
  CLGBTH Session 8
• Film: On These Shoulders We Stand

Sunday, January 8

• Sexing Up the “Long” 1950s, Part 1:
  New Narratives in U.S. Gender and Sexuality Studies
  AHA Session 229, CLGBTH Session 9, joint with the Coordinating Council for Women in History
• The Pleasures and Perils of LGBTQ Public History
  CLGBTH Session 10
• Ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell:
  Lessons Learned from Integrating Minorities and Women in the U.S. Military
  CLGBTH Session 11, joint with the Coordinating Council for Women in History
• Sexing Up the “Long” 1950s, Part 2:
  Urban and Transnational Narratives in the Americas and Europe
  AHA Session 256, CLGBTH Session 12, joint with the Conference on Latin American History

This post first appeared on AHA Today.