Maureen FitzGerald

Senior Lecturer (retired), Transitional Year Program

Maureen FitzGerald has been involved in the Sexual Diversity Studies Program since its inception and held the position of director of the undergraduate program from 2000-2006. As an alumna of the University of Toronto she helped form, activate and maintain the Rainbow Triangle Alumni Association from 1995–2000.

FitzGerald’s doctorate in anthropology was an examination of an emerging class structure in urban Cameroon through an analysis of friendship networks. (Northwestern University 1977). In  the 90’s she was involved in Lesbians Making History, a community based history project centred on “gay” women in 50’s and 60’s Toronto, and has brought this work to larger communities’ attention through writing and public talks as well as through academic conferences. She also extended this interest in oral history to collecting oral histories of gay men associated with the University of Toronto. Her teaching at the University of Toronto has been in the Department of Anthropology, the Community Living Program (Innis College), the Transitional Year Program and University College’s First Year Seminars, where she taught “Lesbian Writing and Film” and co-taught with David Townsend “The Coming Out Novel.”

As managing editor of Women’s Press in the 80’s, FitzGerald initiated and fought for the inclusion of lesbian-centred writing, both fiction and non-fiction there.

More recent activities have been as co-curator with Don McLeod and Scott Rayter of the Queer Can Lit exhibition at the Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto (2008) and as co-editor with Scott Rayter of Queerly Canadian: An Introductory Reader in Sexuality Studies (Canadian Scholars Press, Fall 2012).