Martin B. Duberman papers

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Description: Martin B. Duberman (born 1930) is an American historian, author, playwright, gay rights activist, and scholar known for establishing Queer studies as an academic discipline. His papers, which date from 1917 to 2023, reflect Duberman's professional career, activist endeavors, and personal life. The Martin B. Duberman papers hold correspondence and diaries spanning his adult life; writings files, including manuscripts, research material and reviews; syllabi and lecture notes for college courses he taught; files on activist, cultural, and academic organizations in which he participated; scrapbooks; photographs; and audio and moving image recordings of his radio and television appearances, home movies, and interviews conducted as research for his written work.
Names: Duberman, Martin B. (Creator); Bernays, Edward L., 1891-1995 (Interviewee); Janney, Peter (Author); Middlekauff, Robert (Correspondent)
Dates / Origin: Date Created: 1917 - 2023
Library locations: Manuscripts and Archives Division; Shelf locator: MssCol 848
Topics: Adams, Charles Francis, 1807-1886; Kirstein, Lincoln, 1907-1996; Lowell, James Russell, 1819-1891; Robeson, Paul, 1898-1976; Zinn, Howard, 1922-2010; City University of New York. Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies; American drama; American literature -- 20th century; Civil rights movements; College teachers; Dramatists; Gay activists; Gay authors; Gay college teachers; Historians; History -- Study and teaching; Homosexuality -- History; Male feminists; Photographs; Queer theory; Race relations; United States -- History -- Study and teaching (Higher)
Genres: Albums (Books); Diaries; Motion pictures; Sound recordings; Scrapbooks; Interviews
Notes: Biographical/historical: Martin Bauml Duberman was born in 1930 in New York City and grew up in the nearby suburb of Mount Vernon, New York. He graduated from Horace Mann School in 1948, received a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University in 1952, and a Ph.D from Harvard University in 1957. He taught American history at Yale from 1957 until 1962, when he joined the department of history at Princeton University. Duberman was a tenured professor at Princeton when he accepted an appointment as Distinguished Professor of History at Herbert Lehman College, City University of New York (CUNY), in 1971, where he taught for the remainder of his scholarly career. Duberman is the author of numerous biographies, autobiographies, non-fiction and historical fiction books, essays, magazine articles, book reviews, and theater criticism. His biography, Charles Francis Adams (1961) won the Bancroft Prize. His best-known biography, Paul Robeson (1989), which Duberman later adapted for a young adult audience, won the Theatre Library Association's Freedley Award. Hidden from History (1989), co-edited by Duberman, won a Lambda Literary Award. Other notable non-fiction history books include Black Mountain (1972) and Stonewall (1993). His playwrighting credits include In White America (1963), and Visions of Kerouac (1977). As a young man, Duberman was active in the anti-Vietnam war movement, civil rights struggles, and labor activism. In the early 1970s, Duberman directed his activist focus towards the gay rights movement, helping to establish LGBTQ+ studies as a recognized field of academic inquiry. His published works in this area include About Time (1986), Stonewall (1993), and the autobiographies: Cures (1991), Midlife Queer (1996), and Reaching Ninety (2023). He was a founding member of both the Gay Academic Union and the National Gay Task Force (later renamed National LGBTQ Task Force) in 1972. In 1991, Duberman founded the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) at Lehman College within CUNY Graduate School. CLAGS was the first university-based research center in the United States to focus solely upon the study of historical, cultural, and political issues concerning LGBTQ+ individuals and communities. Duberman served as CLAGS's first executive director from 1991 to 1996. CLAGS helped establish the new academic field of LGBTQ+ studies and its support for this area of scholarship is ongoing. As of 2026, Martin B. Duberman lives in New York City with his life partner, Eli Zal.; Content: The Martin B. Duberman papers, which date from 1917 to 2023, cover Duberman's professional career and personal life. The collection illustrates his contributions as a historian, scholar, author, playwright, and activist, as well as Duberman's personal experience as a gay man living in New York City during the latter half of the 20th and early part of the 21st centuries. Duberman is a prolific letter writer and a self-described compulsive diarist. Correspondence and diaries spanning most of Duberman's life offer intimate insights into his thinking, writing process, and interaction with other writers, publishers, scholars, students, activists, friends, family, and romantic partners, while providing a continuous view of his everyday life over many decades. These letters and diaries served as primary source material for Duberman in the course of writing several autobiographies. Duberman's written works, including his published non-fiction and fiction books, plays, and shorter works written or edited by him, are well represented in the collection in the Writings series. Some unpublished, fragmentary, or abandoned writing projects are also present. Duberman wrote across multiple disciplines and for a wider audience than is typical for academics. Frequent themes include American radicalism, the Civil Rights Movement, educational reform, and LGBTQ+ rights. The Teaching series reflects Duberman's time as a college professor, primarily at Yale, Princeton, and Herbert Lehman College, City University of New York (CUNY). This series holds lecture notes and syllabi from classes he taught. It also documents Duberman's experimental and innovative approaches to teaching and resulting conflicts with other faculty members and university administrators. The establishment of CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies, the first academic LGBTQ+ research center in the United States, is primarily documented in the Organizations series. Other academic, activist, or cultural groups Duberman participated in, such as Queers for Economic Justice, REDRESS, and the New Dramatists Board, are also represented in this series. The rest of the collection consists of items related to Duberman's family, childhood, and youth, and includes scrapbooks, photographs, and audio and moving image recordings.
Physical Description: Extent: 72.79 linear feet (182 boxes). 740.6 kilobytes (434 computer files). 242 audio recordings. 65 moving image recordings
Type of Resource: Text; Sound recording; Moving image; Still image
Identifiers: NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b12040046; MSS Unit ID: 848; Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): e75b3ed0-9a88-013f-ae10-0242ac110003

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Martin B. Duberman papers

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