Evangeline Holcombe Walker Andrews’ (1869-1962) voluminous letters to Charles McLean Andrews are interesting as examples of middle-class language of courtship and romance in the late nineteenth-century. Dates covered 1723-1967 (inclusive), 1885-1956 (bulk).

Annie Beecher Scoville (1866-1953) material includes correspondence from Katharine Lee Bates. Bates and Scoville maintained an intimate friendship for most of their adult lives. The two women met in the late 1880s at Wellesley College, where Scoville was a student and Bates a professor. Their correspondence in its early years (ca. 1883-1890) is filled with emotionally effusive expressions of desire, longing, betrayal, and secrecy. By the turn of the century, though, this ardor seems to have dissipated. Bates and Scoville’s relationship evolved into a friendship centered around intellectual pursuits and the shared experience of being single, educated, independent women who did not define themselves according to conventional ideologies of family and gender.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) material includes correspondence, church records, and other materials relating to the Beecher-Tilton adultery scandal.

Diary kept by Albert Dodd while at Yale College (1836-1837) describing his relations with men and women.

Includes a journal kept by Sheffield while a student at Yale in which he describes an intimate friendship with another male student.

Bryant, the left-wing journalist and writer, was a major figure among intellectual circles and bohemian communities in Paris and New York in the 1910s-1930s. An advocate of socialism, woman suffrage, and free love, she consciously sought to transgress conventional gender roles in her personal as well as professional life. She was married three times, to Paul Trullinger from 1909 to 1916; to John Reed, 1916-1920; and to William Bullitt, 1923-1930. Bryant’s heterosexual romances – which were filled with turbulence and emotional intensity – are also extensively documented in the collection. See, particularly, the folders for John Reed and Eugene O’Neill. She also had a long-term lesbian relationship with a sculptor named Gwen Le Gallienne, which led (in part), to the breakup of her marriage with Bullitt. Although this relationship is not extensively documented, Bryant’s papers provide fascinating glimpses into lesbian & gay life in expat Paris during the 1920s – see, especially, the letters of Claude McKay and Richard McAlmon. [For more complete documentation on her relationship with Le Gallienne and her subsequent divorce, see William C. Bullitt papers (MS 112)]

Virginia Louise “Midge” Donaldson (1919-1960) materials include letters from several women including Sarah “Sally” Spock Trueblood, sister of Dr. Benjamin Spock (Series V, Box 11, Folders 11 and 12). Sally’s Vassar letters contain lengthy, detailed discussions of dating, first sexual experiences, masturbation, and sex education; they also richly describe female friendships. Her adult letters, mostly written after she married, discuss marriage, adultery, free love, and divorce; psychoanalysis and couples’ therapy; menstruation, birth control, and gynecological problems; and her dissatisfaction with traditional gender roles, especially her loneliness and boredom at being a housewife. Letters from “Ruth” (Series V, Box 11, Folder 15), whose last name is unknown, appears to have been an actress and lesbian, and seems to have had a romantic relationship with Midge.

Elizabeth Page Harris (1889-1969), graduate of Vassar College, writer, and pacifist, remained single until her sixty-sixth year, when she married Dr. Herbert Taylor Harris. Page Harris had several intimate relationships with women that are well-documented in her correspondence. See, for example, the letters of Hope Avery and Helen Drusilla Lockwood. Hope Avery was one of Elizabeth Page Harris’ childhood friends. Her letters, written while she was touring and studying in Europe, describe the girl-girl crushes known as “raves” in the parlance of the time. Helen Lockwood (1898-1971) was a friend of Harris from the Vassar class of 1912. Lockwood never married, and it is difficult to discern much about her private life from her letters, which tend to be highly intellectual. However, a few examples from 1915-1916 make intriguing allusions to intense desires that need to be repressed. Although it is unclear whether Lockwood and Harris were romantically involved, it does seem that they shared and discussed such desires. Because of their oblique, coded language, these letters are difficult to interpret.

The papers consist of the diaries of Donald Crossley Vining for the years 1932-1958 and for 1971-1997, as well as typed transcripts from his diaries for 1926-1927. The diaries provide a detailed account of the life of an intellectual, homosexual man in the 1940s and 1950s. Vining, who spent most of his adult life in New York, took a great interest in the arts, and his diaries contain descriptions of operas and plays which he attended; outlines of his current writing projects and theater activities; and details of his daily life and personal relationships. Typescripts of several one and two act plays are included in the papers.

The collection might be of interest to someone writing about sexuality among the mid-20th-century bohemian New York left. Anna’s relationships with Jack London, William English Walling, and Leonard Abbott exemplify many of the contradictions inherent in the New York left’s ideal of “free love” (for one, the fact that free love tended to benefit men rather than women, who were still expected to raise children and adhere to accepted standards of female propriety, at least in public). See, especially, the Leonard Abbott correspondence with Walling in which contain lengthy discussions about the nature of their relationship, especially in relation to the social benefits of marriage vs. free love.

Includes documentation on WWII related projects that studied the effects of military service on Yale and Harvard men and the identification and suitability of homosexuals, psychoneurotics, and psychopaths in the military.

Collection, dated rom 1973 to 2004, consists of printed materials, including reports, newsletters, pamphlets, and flyers, related to the prevention, treatment, and status of AIDS in various countries.

The collection includes assorted publications documenting homophobia in the United States primarily from the 1960s to the 1980s.

The collection includes illustrated publications and printed ephemera from the 1940s to the early 21st century that chronicle transgender communities, performance, and identities ranging from transvestism to transsexual surgery. The collection references a range of perspectives on transgenderism from within and outside its communities.

The collection includes assorted illustrated publications and ephemera, generally produced by the radical sex and leather communities, documenting the development of a wide array of sexual practices, costumes, and communities. The collection dates from the 1970s to the 1990s.

The collection includes printed ephemera and publications from the 1940s to the early 21 century documenting the development of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer communities in their own voices. Includes mass circulation and small press publications.

The collection includes assorted erotic and pornographic publications from the 1950s to the 1990s that document changes in the codes, standards, and aesthetics of the male body.

The New Haven and Connecticut Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Collection includes publications and ephemera, dating from the 1980s to the present, related to LGBT people and culture in New Haven and Connecticut.

This intentionally assembled collection consists of posters and postcards documenting lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual, and queer student life at Yale, specifically gay pride week events and activities. Also included are posters documenting plays written by William Schwalbe.

The records consist of oral history interviews, reports, a timeline, and a small collection of printed materials documenting the history of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) family equality movement in the United States. Most of the individuals interviewed were associated with the following organizations: All Our Families Coalition; Center Families (New York City); Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere (COLAGE); Family Equality Council (Boston) and its predecessors (Gay Fathers Coalition and Gay and Lesbian Parents Coalition International); Fenway Health (Boston); Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services (GLASS); Our Family Coalition (San Francisco Bay Area); and Rainbow Families (Minneapolis). Additional interviewees include attorneys and mental health and fertility services providers.

The collection includes publications, flyers, newsletters and ephemera related primarily to the gay and lesbian liberation movements, but also includes documentation on bisexuality, transgender, trans-sexual and queer issues.

The materials consist of newsclippings, posters, meeting minutes, and ephemera documenting events and activities of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Cooperative at Yale from 1980 to 2004.

The collection contains assorted gay and lesbian comic publications from the 1970s to the 1990s dealing with issues such as coming out, depression, and gay and lesbian liberation. Some magazines appear to be self published.

The Carroll Revue collection documents Carroll Wallace's troupe of female impersonators who began performing in California, as well as other locales, in or around 1954. The collection, which contains materials dating from approximately 1954 to 1961, is comprised largely of black-and-white photographs of drag artists and of performances staged by the Carroll Revue, including images of various international venues. Prints of performers are mostly studio portraits, proofs, and other publicity shots created by professional photographers, with the majority of images representing Carroll Wallace and a fewer number depicting other members of the Revue, such as Bobby Lane, Guy Doran, and Les-Lee. Portraits of other female impersonators, some of whom are identified, are also included in the collection, although their precise association with the Carroll Revue is unknown. In addition to photographic documentation, the collection contains a small amount of printed material, including a press clipping and two announcements in French about a performance by Carroll Wallace as “Guilda” at the Théâtre National in Montreal, Canada, and a Carroll Revue brochure. Correspondence is limited to a single item: an undated letter from Juan José to Carroll Wallace briefly describing a book about “Boy-lesque.”

The Bloodroot Collective is a lesbian-feminist collective that formed in Westport, Connecticut, in 1977 and opened Bloodroot, a vegetarian restaurant and feminist bookstore, in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The records document the Bloodroot Collective, particularly the lives and roles of its two remaining members, Selma Miriam and Noel Furie. The records consist of correspondence, writings and creative works by members and other feminist thinkers, oral histories, restaurant reviews, photographs, legal and financial records of the bookstore and restaurant, event flyers, and topical files.

The papers primarily consist of correspondence, lectures, research notes, writings, biographical records, subject files, and memorabilia. The papers document Boswell's personal life, from childhood to adulthood, as well as his professional life as an openly gay professor of history at Yale and pioneering author of Christianity in the Middle Ages: Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980) and Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (New York: Villard Books, 1994).

The collection consists of printed material collected by Susan M. Chambré for her research on AIDS organizations and advocacy. This research was used for a series of articles in professional journals as well as the book Fighting for Our Lives: New York's AIDS Community and the Politics of Disease (Rutgers University Press, 2006). The material includes annual reports, unpublished reports, newsletters, news clippings, journal articles, pamphlets, board minutes and other material from nearly 100 AIDS-related organizations. Materials date from 1981 to 2015.

The collection consists of interviews and footage of events documenting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) life in Eastern and Central Europe from the 1992 to 2009. The collection also includes a small amount of printed materials from the countries documented.

Photographic prints including photographs of gay and lesbian culture in New York City.

This collection consists of the records of Family Equality Council, a national advocacy organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) parents, guardians, and allies. Materials in the collection consist of correspondence, annual and quarterly reports, articles and clippings, board of directors records, event records, financial and fundraising records, publications, subject files, and electronic files. The collection is particularly strong both for its documentation of the group's activism and advocacy efforts, as well as its efforts to provide community for and document the everyday lives and experiences of LGBTQ families.

The collection documents Harvey Fierstein as author, actor, and gay activist. The papers include scripts, professional correspondence, publicity materials, clippings, legal documents, scrapbooks, photographs, audio recordings, and videotapes.

The records document the organization and activities of the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), a nonprofit legal organization dedicated to defending the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals and people with HIV, primarily in New England. The collection primarily consists of correspondence, topical files, reports, meeting minutes, legal research, litigation and amicus files, publications, volunteer and training manuals, and newspaper clippings created or maintained by GLAD. The records document all aspects of the organization, including its history, structure, and activities from its founding in 1978 to the present. The collection provides a rich resource for the study of GLAD, anti-discrimination efforts, and the legal issues facing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and people with HIV in the United States.

The collection consists of ephemera, mostly educational brochures, about issues and experiences members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community may face that can impact their mental health. Topics include HIV/AIDS, gender identity, biphobia and bisexual erasure, body image and eating disorders, coming out, queer parenting,domestic violence, stress and anxiety, and trauma.

This collection comprises the papers of HIV/AIDS activist and writer, Stephen Gendin. The materials document both Gendin's activism as well as his personal and family life, and include correspondence; photographs; writings; address and appointment books; student papers; notes; audio and video recordings; and electronic files. Many of the organizations with which Gendin was affiliated are represented in the collection, including the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP); the AIDS Prevention Action League (APAL); Community Prescription Service (CPS); POZ Magazine ; and Sex Panic!.

The papers primarily consist of correspondence, writings, theatrical production files, biographical and financial records, memorabilia (including awards and scrapbooks), photographs, photo albums, and audiovisual materials documenting Glines’s personal and professional life as a writer for stage and screen, actor, and producer of gay theater. The Glines, the oldest professional gay theater production company in the United States, founded in 1976 by John Glines, Barry Laine, and Jerry Tobin, is also documented.

The records document the programs and productions of The Glines, one of the earliest gay theater companies in the United States. The records consist of press releases, mailings, news clippings, programs and other promotional materials, audiotapes, t-shirts and an award.

This collection consists of printed ephemera produced by Good Vibrations, a feminist sex toy shop. Materials include booklets and pamphlets for educating customers on various aspects of sexual activities and sexuality, outreach materials for encouraging sex positivity, and promotional items for the store including business cards, fliers with workshop information, and product catalogs. Educational and outreach materials focus on tips and guides for sexual activities as well as customer stories of using products purchased at Good Vibrations.

The papers document the work and research interests of academic and activist Bert Hansen. The material is divided into two categories, AIDS Committee of Toronto (ACT) records, and newspaper clippings. The AIDS Committee of Toronto records consist of administrative files related to operations of the group, board and committee-related minutes, agendas, and correspondence, and printed ephemera. These files date from 1983 to 1984.

The papers consist of an oral history interview, newspaper clippings, correspondence, legal documents, and video recordings documenting the activism of David Knapp for gay and lesbian rights. The bulk of the papers concern Knapp's involvement in efforts to change the Boy Scouts of America's (BSA) position on homosexuality. Knapp's oral history provides an overview of his life, providing a rich source of information on his youth, family life, career, discovery of his homosexuality, and activism. The papers also contain newspaper clippings on various gay and lesbian issues but very little on the gay and lesbian organizations in which Knapp is involved.

The papers consist of correspondence, speeches, writings, and other materials (including research and teaching materials, photographs, memorabilia, newspaper and periodical clippings, books, and radio and television tapes) of Max Lerner, an American educator, author, lecturer, historian, and political scientist. The papers include documentation on his controversial writings on homosexuality. Correspondence from the 1950s documents Lerner's interest in national politics and homosexuality. Prominent correspondents include Alfred C. Kinsey in 1954, criticizing Lerner's interpretation of his work.

The records consist of meeting minutes, correspondence, newsletters, an annual report, and conference brochures documenting the establishment and activities of the Lesbian and Gay Studies Center at Yale. Also included is a compilation of newscasts (VHS) concerning the protests following the arrest of some participants of the 1989 conference, Inside/Out, sponsored by the center.

The Love Makes a Family (LMF) records consist of email correspondence, bylaws, reports, meeting minutes, research data, publications, Web pages, social media account files, topical files, interviews and testimonies, photographs, audiovisual recordings, and newspaper clippings documenting the history, structure, and activities of LMF, Inc. and its related organizations. The records primarily document LMF's successful efforts on behalf of marriage equality for same-sex couples in Connecticut.

The papers, dating from 1924 to the present, consist of personal materials, correspondence, clippings, subject and writing files, and audiovisual materials that document David Mixner’s life as a gay male, leader in the gay rights movement, author, and political consultant and advisor. [The papers are closed until January 1, 2031, unless researchers receive permission in writing to access them from the donor, the person holding power of attorney for the donor, or the executor of the estate of the donor.]

The papers consist of Christine Pattee’s interview and discussion notes, an outline, and a chronology as well as a copy of an article from 1980. Primarily dated from 1972 to 1974, the papers document the early years of the women’s liberation movement in New Haven, particularly the experiences of several lesbian women within the movement. Topics covered include early activities; the Women’s Collective; feminism; socialism; AIM (American Independent Movement); lesbians within the movement; response to lesbianism; Yale women; and the arts.

The papers concern Julia Penelope's study of language used in gay and lesbian communities throughout the United States, specifically slang. The slang studied included terms for referring to members of these communities, outsiders of these communities, behavior, and actions, including sex-related acts. The results were used in her 1970 article "Homosexual Slang," published in the journal American Speech and her 1979 paper cowritten with Susan Wolfe, Sexist Slang and the Gay Community (Michigan Occasional Papers in Women's Studies, No. 14). The papers are dated from 1964 to 2001 and consist of anonymous questionnaires completed in 1967 and 1973, research notes, drafts, and unpublished and published reports of the studies.

The papers are comprised of writings, collected ephemera, correspondence, book and article research materials, audiovisual materials, and photographs documenting the personal and professional lives of Christopher Phillips, who was active in the gay liberation movement beginning with the founding of the first Yale gay group in October 1969. He worked full time at the Gay Community Services Center in Los Angeles (1973-75), and lived with other Center gay activists in the Highland Park Collective. [Series XV, Diaries, is closed until January 1, 2060, unless researchers receive written permission to access the diaries from the donor or his executor.]

The Candida Scott Piel papers, dating from the 1950s to the present, document a socially active gay and lesbian culture centered in New York City. The papers include subject files, printed materials, writings, ephemera, and audiovisual materials. There is particularly substantive material on AIDS and AIDS treatments, gay clubs and "the circuit" culture, the Jewel Box Revue, and events organized by Piel, mainly as fundraisers for organizations such as the American Foundation for AIDS Research.

The collection consists of the records of Rainbow Families, a membership advocacy organization for gay and lesbian parents and their families. The records document the organization's efforts to provide support, organization, advocacy, and public education on behalf of gay and lesbian parents and their families, and consist of Board of Directors records, event records, membership records, strategic plans, and quarterly newsletters.

The digital images consist of Cherry Grove celebrities and royalty at various functions, including teas, beauty contests, and the annual Invasion of the Pines. The images are crafted using the digital equivalents of photography, stage makeup, and cosmetic surgery.

The papers comprise biographical information of Philip M. and Lorna Sarrel; files documenting the establishment of the Young Mothers Program (YMP) at Yale-New Haven Hospital, an outgrowth of the teenage pregnancy clinic; the inclusion of sex education courses in the curricula for a New Haven high school and Yale college and medical students; audiotapes of Sarrel’s lectures; films, mostly commercially produced, depicting aspects of human sexuality for the training of medical personnel and the education of college students; and related writings by Sarrel and others.

The materials comprise correspondence, meeting minutes, reports, printed ephemera, posters, photographs, and play scripts collected by Harold I. Seeley, Jr. that document the activities of the Arts Project of Cherry Grove, as well as the community of Cherry Grove, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) resort community on Fire Island, off the coast of Long Island, New York.

The papers document William Silver’s seminary thesis, his application for ordination into the United Presbyterian Church, and his later life in the Cherry Grove community on Fire Island, New York. Particularly well documented is Silver’s coming out process and the Presbyterian Church’s debate on the ordination of homosexuals in the 1970s. The papers consist of a journal, correspondence, photographs, newsletters, news clippings, and printed material.

The collection consists of publications authored, compiled by, or edited by Larry Townsend and published by his publishing house, L. T. Publications. The publications include fiction and comics and are illustrated with drawings and photographs. The collection also includes works by others. The publications document the gay male leather community and sadomasochistic sexual practices through fiction, nonfiction, drawings, photographs, and product catalogs.

The papers consist of Anna Wipfler's (Yale 2009) senior essay, "The Making of 'the Gay Ivy': A History of Lesbian and Gay Student Organizing at Yale, 1969-1987" and her interviews with lesbian and gay Yale alumni.

The records consist of correspondence, minutes, drafts of constitution and bylaws, newsletters, and news clippings of Corey Alan Friedlander documenting the activities of the Yale Gay and Lesbian Alumni (GALA).

The records consist of research files relating to "The Pink and the Blue: Lesbian and Gay Life at Yale and in Connecticut, 1642-2004," an exhibit produced by the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale. The files document Yale and Connecticut people and events relevant to LGBT studies.

The records of Office on the Education of Women (formerly the Coeducation Office) document all aspects of Yale University’s transition to undergraduate coeducation, as well as the status of women at Yale and women in academe. Planning for incorporating women into Yale College and the residential colleges, admissions, and the first undergraduate female students are particularly well documented. The records include correspondence, memoranda, reports, meeting agendas and minutes, admission applications and other student data, and printed articles and news clippings, primarily maintained by the Special Assistant to the President on the Education of Women.