Leather Archives & Museum announces Visiting Scholars for 2016-2017

CHICAGO — The Leather Archives and Museum announced this week the 2016-2017 Visiting Scholars. This year, there are three.

Scott Herring has been named a 2016-2017 Visiting Scholar at the Leather Archives & Museum.  Scott is Professor of English and Affiliate Faculty in American Studies, Gender Studies, and The Kinsey Institute for the Study of Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana University. His research focuses on modern American literary studies (especially 1914-1945), American cultural studies, and LGBTQ studies as well as subfields such as critical rural/regional studies and material culture studies.

Scott will use his time at the LA&M to utilize collections related to Sam Steward toward a new book, ¨Elderly Moderns¨, a study of poetry, novels, memoirs, and memorabilia produced by hetero- and homosexual American modernist artists late in their lives, when the period of modernism is thought to have long subsided.

Francisco Ibáñez-Carrasco and Erica Meiners have also been jointly named 2016-2017 Visiting Scholars at the Leather Archives & Museum.  Francisco is the Director of Education and Training at the Ontario HIV Treatment Network.  His memoir, ¨Giving it Raw: Nearly 30 Years with AIDS¨ was published in 2015.

Erica Meiners is author of ¨For the Children? Protecting Innocence in a Carceral State¨ (University of Minnesota, 2016). The Bernard J. Brommel Distinguished Research Professor at Northeastern Illinois University, she is currently a Soros Justice Fellow writing on reducing our nation’s reliance on criminalization to end sexual violence.

Francisco and Erica will use their time at the LA&M to continue research in a pilot project seeking to forefront BDSM/kink/queer contributions and insights in the current public debate surrounding consent, sex, criminalization and harm reduction.