Urvashi Vaid: The Vassar and Boston Years, 1975-83, by Marc Stein

This exhibit focuses on Urvashi Vaid (1958-2022), a leading LGBTQ activist of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The exhibit includes three components: a roundtable interview featuring three friends of Urvashi’s from her years at Vassar College (1975-79); a roundtable interview featuring four friends of Urvashi’s from her years in Boston (1980-83); and a set of links to publications and other materials by and about Urvashi. Published originally on OutHistory in 2023.

Urvashi: Links

Books, Articles, and Reports by Urvashi Vaid

Urvashi Vaid, Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation (New York: Anchor, 1995)

Urvashi Vaid, Creating Change: Sexuality, Public Policy, and Civil Rights, coedited with John D’Emilio and William B. Turner (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000)

Urvashi Vaid, Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics (Magnus, 2012)

Catherine Hanssens, Aisha C. Moodie-Mills, Andrea J. Ritchie, Dean Spade, and Urvashi Vaid, “Roadmap for Change: Federal Policy Recommendations for Addressing the Criminalization of LGBT People and People Living with HIV,” May 2014

Memorials, Films, and Other Materials about Urvashi Vaid

Clay Risen, “Urvashi Vaid, Pioneering L.G.B.T.Q. Activist, Is Dead at 63,” New York Times, 17 May 2022

Masha Gessen, The Profilic Activism of Urvashi Vaid, New Yorker, 24 May 2022

Eric Marcus, “Remembering Urvashi Vaid ’79, 1958-2022,” Vassar Quarterly (Summer 2022)

“Urvashi Vaid Memorial Gathering,” Northeastern University, Boston, 28 Sept. 2022

“A Celebration of the Life of Urvashi Vaid,” B’nai Jeshurun, New York, 3 Nov. 2022

The American LGBTQ+ Museum, “Memorial to Urvashi Vaid”

Eric Marcus, “Urvashi Vaid,” Making Gay History Podcast

“An Extraordinary Legacy,” Justice Work

There Are Things to Do, dir. Mike Syers, 2023