Esther Newton
Esther Newton is retired from the Women’s Studies Department at the University of Michigan. She was also Professor of Anthropology and Kempner Distinguished Professor at Purchase College, State University of New York. She was a founder and co-chair of the Lesbian and Gay Studies Program at Purchase College. She is the author of numerous articles and of Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America (University of Chicago Press). Cherry Grove, Fire Island: 60 Years in America’s First Gay and Lesbian Town (Beacon Press 1993) and Margaret Mead Made Me Gay: Personal Essays, Public Ideas (Duke University Press 2000) both won the Ruth Benedict Award of the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists of the American Anthropological Association. Her memoir, My Butch Career, published by Duke University Press in 2018, is a Lammy finalist in the lesbian memoir category. It has also been reviewed in Curve, the LA Review of Books and the New Yorker, among others.
