University of Puget Sound’s Gender & Queer Studies Program is excited to announce a public talk with Dr. Lynne Gerber, Thursday, March 26, from 6:00-7:30 p.m. We invite you to join us in welcoming her to our campus for a conversational session with Dr. Heather White (University of Puget Sound), whose research focuses on American religious history, sexuality, gender, and twentieth-century movements.

Gerber is a co-founder of Eureka Street Productions, which partnered with Slate magazine to release the documentary podcast When We All Get to Heaven. Gerber, the podcast’s host, takes us into the story of one of the first gay-positive churches, the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco, of which she has been a friend since she first attended a Sunday evening service in 2001. We will listen to excerpts from the podcast, a first exploration into over 1,200 cassette tapes recorded during the AIDS epidemic. Then, we will dive deeper into these stories through Gerber and White’s lively discussion.

Dr. Lynne Gerber is an independent scholar, producer, and project director located in San Francisco. She has held research and teaching positions at the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard Divinity School. She authored Seeking the Straight and Narrow: Weight Loss and Sexual Re-orientation in Evangelical America (Chicago, 2011), and more of her written work has appeared in American Quarterly, Gender & Society, Salon, the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Religion Dispatches, Novo Religio, The Revealer, and numerous edited volumes.

This event is free and open to the public.

Thank you to all our event's sponsors: Crime, Law, & Justice Studies Program, the University Chaplaincy, the Department of Asian Studies, the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity, the Office of Intercultural Engagement, the Department of Religion, Spirituality, and Society, and the Department of History.