Jeffrey Paul Escoffier (October 9, 1942 – May 20, 2022) was an American author, activist, and media strategist. He was a research associate at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. He has taught at the University of California (Berkeley and Davis), Barnard College, The New School, and Rutgers University, Newark. He lived and worked in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, New York. Escoffier earned his undergraduate degree at St. John's College, Annapolis, before doing his graduate work at Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. He was the director of health media and marketing for the

New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is the department of the government of New York City responsible for public health along with issuing birth certificates, dog licenses, and conducting restaurant inspection and enforcem ...

from 1999 to 2015. Escoffier was an active participant in the

LGBT community The LGBT community (also known as the LGBTQ+ community, GLBT community, gay community, or queer community) is a loosely defined grouping of lesbian, gay men, gay, bisexuality, bisexual, transgender, and other queer individuals united by a comm ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, San Francisco, and New York City.

Life and career

Jeffrey Paul Escoffier was born to Iris (Miller) Wendel and George on October 9, 1942, in

Baltimore, Maryland Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

and raised in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

and

Staten Island Staten Island ( ) is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Richmond County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located in the city's southwest portion, the borough is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull an ...

. His mother was owner of an antique shop and father worked in

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

. Escoffier obtained bachelor’s degree from St. John’s College and earned master’s degree in international affairs from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. In 1970 he moved to

where he pursued his doctoral studies in economic history at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

. In 1972 he co-founded and served on the editorial board of ''The Gay Alternative'' (1972–1976), a gay and lesbian cultural magazine. In 1977 he moved to San Francisco, where he co-founded the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project. In 1978 he joined the editorial board of ''

Socialist Review The ''Socialist Review'' is a monthly magazine of the British Socialist Workers Party. As well as being printed it is also published online. Original publication: 1950–1962 The ''Socialist Review'' was set up in 1950 as the main publication o ...

'', a

democratic socialist Democratic socialism is a left-wing political philosophy that supports political democracy and some form of a socially owned economy, with a particular emphasis on economic democracy, workplace democracy, and workers' self-management within a ...

ic journal, and served as its executive editor from 1980 to 1988. In 1988 Escoffier co-founded ''OUT/LOOK: A National Lesbian and Gay Quarterly'', one of the first joint lesbian and gay cultural ventures. Starting in 1990, OUT/LOOK sponsored, under Escoffier's leadership, a series of conferences called OutWrite that brought together over 1,200 LGBT writers from across the U.S. These conferences brought together several notable writers such as

Judy Grahn Judy Grahn (born July 28, 1940) is an American poet and author. Inspired by her experiences of disenfranchisement as a butch lesbian, she became a feminist poet, highly-regarded in underground circles before achieving public fame. A major influe ...

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

Cherrie Moraga Cherrie is both a surname and a given name. Notable people with the name include: *George Kruck Cherrie (1865-1948), American naturalist and explorer *Peter Cherrie (born 1983), Scottish football goalkeeper *Cherrie Ying (born 1983), actress *Cher ...

Gore Vidal Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (; born Eugene Louis Vidal, October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit, erudition, and patrician manner. Vidal was bisexual, and in his novels and ...

Edward Albee Edward Franklin Albee III ( ; March 12, 1928 – September 16, 2016) was an American playwright known for works such as ''The Zoo Story'' (1958), '' The Sandbox'' (1959), ''Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'' (1962), '' A Delicate Balance'' (1966) ...

, and

Essex Hemphill Essex Hemphill (April 16, 1957 – November 4, 1995) was an openly gay American poet and activist. He is known for his contributions to the Washington, D.C. art scene in the 1980s, and for openly discussing the topics pertinent to the African-Am ...

. In the wake of the OutWrite conferences, he worked as a literary agent for lesbian and gay authors across the

Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gov ...

. Escoffier served on the board of the

Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies (formerly known as ''Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies'' or ''CLAGS'') was founded in 1991 by professor Martin Duberman as the first university-based research center in the United States dedicated to the study ...

(CLAGS) at the

City University of New York The City University of New York ( CUNY; , ) is the Public university, public university system of Education in New York City, New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven Upper divis ...

from 1992 to 1995 and then from 2010 to 2013. He was the director of the CLAGS Project on Families, Values, and Public School Curriculum. In 1995 he joined the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene as the deputy director of the Office of Gay and Lesbian Health. In 2000 he became the director of Health Media and Marketing and held that position until his retirement in August 2015. There he supervised the department's media and public education campaigns on several topics, including

smoking cessation Smoking cessation, usually called quitting smoking or stopping smoking, is the process of discontinuing tobacco smoking. Tobacco smoke contains nicotine, which is addictive and can cause dependence. As a result, nicotine withdrawal often make ...

HIV prevention HIV prevention refers to practices that aim to prevent the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). HIV prevention practices may be undertaken by individuals to protect their own health and the health of those in their community, or may ...

and

testing An examination (exam or evaluation) or test is an educational assessment intended to measure a test-taker's knowledge, skill, aptitude, physical fitness, or classification in many other topics (e.g., beliefs). A test may be administered verba ...

, anti-

obesity Obesity is a medical condition, sometimes considered a disease, in which excess body fat has accumulated to such an extent that it may negatively affect health. People are classified as obese when their body mass index (BMI)—a person's we ...

ebola Ebola, also known as Ebola virus disease (EVD) and Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF), is a viral hemorrhagic fever in humans and other primates, caused by ebolaviruses. Symptoms typically start anywhere between two days and three weeks after becom ...

influenza Influenza, commonly known as "the flu", is an infectious disease caused by influenza viruses. Symptoms range from mild to severe and often include fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle pain, headache, coughing, and fatigue. These symptoms ...

, and

immunization Immunization, or immunisation, is the process by which an individual's immune system becomes fortified against an infectious agent (known as the immunogen). When this system is exposed to molecules that are foreign to the body, called ''non-sel ...

. Escoffier died in Brooklyn on May 20, 2022, aged 79, from complications of a fall.

Works

*''John Maynard Keynes'' (New York: Chelsea House, 1995) *''American Homo: Community and Perversity'' (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998) *''Mark Morris' L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato'' (New York: Marlowe, 2001) *''Sexual Revolution'' (New York: Thunder's Mouth, 2003) *''Bigger Than Life: The History of Gay Porn Cinema from Beefcake to Hardcore'' (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2009) *''Intimate States: Gender, Sexuality, and Governance in Modern US History'' (chapter co-written with Whitney Strub an
Jeffrey Patrick Colgan
(Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2021) *''Sex, Society, and the Making of Pornography: The Pornographic Object of Knowledge'' (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2021)

References

External links

Brooklyn Institute for Social Research faculty page

Academia.edu profile page
*
Jeffrey Escoffier records of "The Gay Alternative"
held a
John J. Wilcox, Jr. LGBT ArchivesWilliam Way LGBT Community Center
{{DEFAULTSORT:Escoffier, Jeffrey 1942 births 2022 deaths 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers Accidental deaths from falls Accidental deaths in New York (state) American civil servants Activists from Baltimore Columbia University alumni LGBT people from Maryland American LGBT writers New York (state) socialists People in public health St. John's College (Annapolis/Santa Fe) alumni