Transnational LGBT Activism: Working for Sexual Rights Worldwide -- book talk with Ryan Thoreson '07

Transnational LGBT Activism: Working for Sexual Rights Worldwide offers a firsthand account of the politics of a U.S.-based NGO advocating for LGBT human rights worldwide. In it, Ryan Thoreson looks at the origins of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), who is engaged in its work, how they conceptualize LGBT human rights, and how they have institutionalized their views at the United Nations and elsewhere.

After a full year of in-depth research in New York City and Cape Town, South Africa, Thoreson is able to reconstruct IGLHRC’s early campaigns and highlight decisive shifts in the organization’s work from its founding to the present day. Using a number of high-profile campaigns for illustration, he offers insight into why activists have framed particular demands in specific ways and how intergovernmental advocacy shapes the claims that activists ultimately make.

Ryan Thoreson is an anthropologist focusing on the politics and practice of sexual rights advocacy. He received his DPhil in anthropology from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and his JD from Yale Law School. Thoreson has worked with the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), the LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, and the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA).

Co-sponsored by the Harvard Gender and Sexuality Caucus, Committee on Degrees in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Harvard College Office of BGLTQ Student Life, and Harvard Kennedy School LGBTQ Caucus.