Join us for this virtual event!

Eric Gonzaba will present his work on Bringing the Gay “Green Book” Online. As a trained historian and professor of American Studies Eric will discuss how he is uncovering and preserving hidden stories through a digital project called “Mapping the Gay Guides.” The project uses a series of once popular and essential travel guides published by Bob Damron to map historic spaces across the United States. Eric will speak about some of the many hidden stories, both happy and heartbreaking, that have been uncovered through the process of mapping the history of these LGBTQ+ spaces.

About Eric Gonzaba, our speaker

Eric Gonzaba is an Assistant Professor of American Studies at California State University, Fullerton where he teaches courses on the history of race and sexuality in America. He received his PhD in American history at George Mason University in 2019. His work has previously been supported by grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Point Foundation, and the Elton John AIDS Foundation. Gonzaba currently serves as co-chair of the Committee on LGBT History, an affiliated society of the American Historical Association. His digital public history work includes Wearing Gay History, an online archive that explores LGBT history through t-shirts, and Mapping the Gay Guides, a digital mapping project that uses historical gay travel guides to map queer American life. He’s currently working on a biography of Bob Damron, the founder of the gay travel guides that make up the bulk of the Mapping the Gay Guides dataset.