THE OBITUARY OF ALLAN BÉRUBÉ that appeared in The New York Times began with a reference to his MacArthur Fellowship and then moved on to Coming Out Under Fire (1990), his groundbreaking history of gay men and lesbians during World War II. Such obvious attention to these two markers as the signal achievements of his life is understandable. The MacArthur award labeled Allan a “genius,” and a book about World War II planted him squarely in the mainstream of American history. As a topic, it is readily legible to almost everyone as “important.”I think of Allan differently. “Public intellectual” is a contemporary phrase that perhaps comes closer to capturing who he was and what he did, but even that distorts my picture of him. Public intellectual conjures images of tenured academics of high repute—my former dean, Stanley Fish, pops to mind—who, besides composing their scholarly studies, also publish op-eds in the Times and The Washington Post or essays in The New Republic. Or, these days, they blog and are quoted by other bloggers. That still isn’t Allan.
Allan was a community historian. He believed passionately in the power of history to change the way individuals and even whole groups of people understood the world and their place in it. Except for short interludes, such as the year he held a Rockefeller Fellowship at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in New York, he was always without formal—and paid—connections to the institutions that sustain intellectual and cultural work. He reported, so to speak, to the people whose history he wrote about. He most cared about how community members—LGBT folks—responded to his talks and his writings, not in the sense of craving their approval, but more as evidence that the history he uncovered was having an impact.
Click for D'Emilio's complete article honoring the life and work of Allan Bérubé.
Listen to NPR interview with Allan Bérubé by Terry Gross on Fresh Air December, 2007.
Thank you, Lisa, for sending D'Emilio's article.
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