Eric Cervini (born 1992) is an American historian and author of
LGBTQ
' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity.
The LGBT term is a ...
politics and culture. His 2020 book, ''The Deviant's War: The Homosexual vs. The United States of America'', was a
''New York Times'' Bestseller and a finalist for the
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
. He also runs a queer history newsletter, ''Queer History 101'', which focuses on sharing
LGBTQ history.
Cervini is a member of the Harvard Gender and Sexuality Caucus' Board of Directors, as well as an advisor to the
Mattachine Society
The Mattachine Society (), founded in 1950, was an early national gay rights organization in the United States, perhaps preceded only by Chicago's Society for Human Rights. Communist and labor activist Harry Hay formed the group with a collection ...
in
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
Life
Cervini was born in California and raised in
Round Rock, Texas
Round Rock is a city in the U.S. state of Texas, in Williamson County (with a small part in Travis County), which is a part of the Greater Austin metropolitan area. Its population is 119,468 as of the 2020 census.
The city straddles the Bal ...
, by a single mother, Lynn Cervini.
He attended
Westwood High School, where he graduated with an
International Baccalaureate
The International Baccalaureate (IB), formerly known as the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO), is a nonprofit foundation headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and founded in 1968. It offers four educational programmes: the IB Dip ...
diploma in 2010. As of 2020, he currently lives in Los Angeles.
Cervini
came out
Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBT people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity.
Framed and debated as a privacy issue, coming out of ...
as gay days before enrolling at
Harvard College
Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...
, where he graduated in 2014 with a B.A. in History. After a year in 2015 earning his
Master of Philosophy
The Master of Philosophy (MPhil; Latin ' or ') is a postgraduate degree. In the United States, an MPhil typically includes a taught portion and a significant research portion, during which a thesis project is conducted under supervision. An MPhil m ...
in historical studies as the Lionel de Jersey Harvard Scholar at the Department of Politics and International Studies at
Emmanuel College, Cambridge
Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer to Elizabeth I. The site on which the college sits was once a priory for Dominican mon ...
, he won a
Gates Cambridge Scholarship
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation established the Gates Cambridge Scholarships in 2000 with a $210 million donation to support outstanding graduate students' study at the University of Cambridge. The scholarship is one of the most competitiv ...
to continue his research as part of a doctorate program.
He received a Ph.D. in history in 2019.
During his time studying at Cambridge, Cervini researched gender and sexuality in ancient society.
Career
After seven years researching the pre-
Stonewall riots
The Stonewall riots (also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, or simply Stonewall) were a series of spontaneous protests by members of the gay community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of Ju ...
homophile movement
The homophile movement is a collective term for the main organisations and publications supporting and representing sexual minorities in the 1950s to 1960s around the world. The name comes from the term ''homophile'', which was commonly used by the ...
, Cervini signed a book deal with
Farrar, Straus, & Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger Williams Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer ...
in 2018. In the months leading up to the book release, Cervini started a podcast ''The Deviant’s World,'' and a Youtube and Instagram series, ''The Magic Closet'', to share his research that did not make it into the book.
''The Deviant's War''
In June 2020, Cervini’s book, ''The Deviant's War: The Homosexual vs. The United States of America'', was published and became a
''New York Times'' Bestseller—the first work of
LGBTQ
' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity.
The LGBT term is a ...
history to make the list in 27 years.
''The Deviant's War'' is the first full-length biography of
Frank Kameny, a key figure in the gay liberation movement who is widely considered the “grandfather of the
gay rights movement
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movements are social movements that advocate for LGBT people in society. Some focus on equal rights, such as the ongoing movement for same-sex marriage, while others focus on liberation, as in the ...
”.
Cervini examined the life of Kameny, who was a pioneer in early
homophile movement
The homophile movement is a collective term for the main organisations and publications supporting and representing sexual minorities in the 1950s to 1960s around the world. The name comes from the term ''homophile'', which was commonly used by the ...
for
LGBTQ rights
Rights affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people vary greatly by country or jurisdiction—encompassing everything from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the death penalty for homosexuality.
Notably, , 33 ...
in the decades leading up to the 1969
Stonewall riots
The Stonewall riots (also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, or simply Stonewall) were a series of spontaneous protests by members of the gay community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of Ju ...
, and beyond.
Gay Pride
LGBT pride (also known as gay pride or simply pride) is the promotion of the self-affirmation, dignity, equality, and increased visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people as a social group. Pride, as opposed to sham ...
, unnamed until the 1970s, was argued in concept by Kameny to the
U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
in 1961.
In the 1970s, Kameny scored multiple victories, one being the decision to strike homosexuality from the
American Psychiatric Association
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the largest psychiatric organization in the world. It has more than 37,000 members are involve ...
’s manual of mental disorders.
Charles Kaiser
Charles Kaiser is an American author and journalist best known for his nonfiction books '' 1968 in America'' (1988), '' The Gay Metropolis'' (1997), and '' The Cost of Courage'' (2015). A former reporter for ''The New York Times'', ''The Wall Stree ...
wrote of Kameny that he "may be responsible for more fundamental social change in the post-World War II world than any other American of his generation.”
''New York'' magazine's "Approval Matrix" placed ''The Deviant's War'' in its quadrant for "brilliant" and "highbrow" and ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' book review also called it "brilliant," as well as a "rich portrait of Kameny." Rich Juzwiak of
''The Attic'' called the book “painstakingly detailed” with "exhaustive" research.
''The Deviant's War'' examines the experiences of LGBTQ people in Kameny's lifetime.
Cervini’s research used
declassified documents and thousands of personal documents, and tells Kameny’s story including the
closeted
''Closeted'' and ''in the closet'' are metaphors for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and other (LGBTQ+) people who have not disclosed their sexual orientation or gender identity and aspects thereof, including sexual identity and human ...
gay subculture, coupled with the government fear that LGBTQ people were
communists
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a so ...
and security risks.
According to Michael Henry Adams of ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', LGBTQ people faced the same social disdain and institutionalized hatred “faced by blacks and Jews, buttressed by centuries of religious bigotry” but were more loathed. He also covers other key figures in early LGBTQ history including
Jack Nichols,
Barbara Gittings
Barbara Gittings (July 31, 1932 – February 18, 2007) was a prominent American activist for LGBT equality. She organized the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) from 1958 to 1963, edited the national DOB magazine ''The Ladd ...
,
Jim Fouratt,
Randy Wicker
Randy is a given name, popular in the United States and Canada. It is primarily a masculine name. It was originally derived from the names Randall, Randolf, Randolph, as well as Bertrand and Andrew, and may be a short form (hypocorism) of them ...
,
Marsha P. Johnson
Marsha P. Johnson (August 24, 1945 – July 6, 1992) also known as Malcolm Michaels Jr., was an American gay liberation''I've been involved in gay liberation ever since it first started in 1969'', 15:20 into the interview, Johnson is quoted as ...
, and
Sylvia Rivera
Sylvia Rivera (July 2, 1951 – February 19, 2002) was an American gay liberation and transgender rights activist September 21, 1995. Accessed July 24, 2015. who was also a noted community worker in New York. Rivera, who identified as a drag q ...
.
Cervini examined the intersections of the early LGBTQ rights movement, as well as the Black Freedom Movement, the
New Left
The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, g ...
, lesbian activism, and transgender resistance.
Awards and honors
Cervini was named to Logo30’s 2020 list of influential LGBTQ figures. ''The Deviant's War'' was named to the New York Times Editor’s Choice Recommended Books, won the 2021
Randy Shilts Award
The Randy Shilts Award is an annual literary award, presented by Publishing Triangle to honour works of non-fiction of relevance to the gay community. First presented in 1997, the award was named in memory of American journalist Randy Shilts.
Winn ...
and was a finalist for the 2021
Pulitzer Prize for History
The Pulitzer Prize for History, administered by Columbia University, is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It has been presented since 1917 for a distinguished book about the history ...
.
References
External links
2022 Interview at ''Them''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cervini, Eric
1992 births
21st-century American writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
Harvard College alumni
American gay writers
Living people