Constitution Day Presentation: LGBT Inclusion in the US Constitution: James Bond, Gender Norms, and Military Inclusion

Susan Burgess, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Political Science, Ohio University, will present the 2023 Constitution Day Lecture, drawing on her most recent book, LGBT Inclusion in American Life: Pop Culture, Political Imagination, and Civil Rights (NYU, 2023). Using civil rights narratives, pop culture, and critical theory, LGBT Inclusion in American Life tells the story of how exclusion was transformed into inclusion in US politics and society, as pop culture changed mainstream Americans thinking about “non-gay” issues, namely privacy, sex and gender norms, and family. Susan Burgess explores films such as Casablanca, various James Bond movies, and Julie and Julia, and television shows such as thirtysomething and The Americans, as well as the Broadway sensation Hamilton, as sources of growing popular support for LGBT rights. By drawing on popular culture as a rich source of public understanding, Burgess explains how the greater public came to accept and even support the three central pillars of LGBT freedoms in the post–World War II era: to have consensual adult sex without fear of criminal penalty, to serve openly in the military, and to marry legally. LGBT Inclusion in American Life argues that pop culture can help us to imagine unknown futures that lead beyond what we currently desire from contemporary politics, and in return asks now that the mainstream public has come to accept LGBT freedoms, where might the popular imagination be headed in the future?

Professor Burgess is an expert in American politics whose interests include law and courts, radical politics, gender and sexuality, and popular culture. In addition to LGBT Inclusion in American Life, she author of The CQ Guide to Radical Politics in the United States (with Kate Leeman, CQ/SAGE); The New York Times on Gay and Lesbian Issues (CQ/SAGE); The Founding Fathers, Pop Culture, and Constitutional Law: Who's Your Daddy? (Ashgate) and Contest for Constitutional Authority: The Abortion and War Powers Debates (Kansas). She is also a co-editor of LGBTQ Politics: A Critical Reader (with Marla Brettschneider and Cricket Keating, NYU). Her work has also appeared in a wide variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals including Political Research Quarterly; Polity; New Political Science; Review of Politics; PS: Politics and Political Science; Law and Social Inquiry; Law and Society Review; Law, Culture, and the Humanities; Studies in Law, Politics, and Society; and differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies.