Stonewall gets the headlines, but World War II may be the more pivotal chapter in LGBTQ community formation — a claim University of Utah historian Matt Basso will unpack in a free public lecture Thursday, August 20, 2026, at 6 p.m. at Signature Books, 508 W. 400 South.
Basso, an associate professor jointly appointed in History and Gender Studies, argues that the war pulled queer Americans out of isolated hometowns and into shared spaces — military bases, defense plants, bars — forging networks that hadn’t existed at that scale before. His research shows gay men serving in active combat despite official exclusions, and drag performances thriving in officially sanctioned spaces like USO shows and base theater productions. The result is a far more complicated, human portrait of the “Greatest Generation” than popular memory allows.
Basso translates this scholarship into public-facing work, too, building digital archives, oral history projects, and K-12 curricula that bring these overlooked histories into classrooms and community spaces.
The talk continues the Institute’s mission of surfacing Utah’s, and the nation’s, hidden queer history, honoring namesake Mildred Berryman, whose early-1900s study of a Salt Lake City lesbian social circle remains one of the first documented queer communities in the state.
Free and open to the public.
