Michael Lynch (professor)
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University of Iowa
Michael Lynch | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1944 Dunn, North Carolina, U.S. |
| Died | July 9, 1991 (aged 46–47) |
| Education | Goddard College University of Iowa |
| Occupations | |
| Years active | 1971–1991 |
| Employer | University of Toronto |
| Organizations | |
| Spouse |
Gail Lynch
(m. 1969; sep. 1977) |
| Children | 1 |
Michael Lynch (1944 – July 9, 1991) was an American-born Canadian professor, poet, journalist, and activist,[1] most noted as a pioneer of gay studies in Canadian academia and as an important builder of many significant LGBT rights and HIV/AIDS organizations in Toronto.[1]
Lynch was born and raised in Dunn, North Carolina.[2] He studied at Goddard College and the University of Iowa and wrote his doctoral dissertation on the poetry of Wallace Stevens.[1][2]
Career
From 1971 to 1990, Lynch taught in the Department of English at the University of Toronto at both the main and Erindale College campuses.[3] After coming out as a gay man in 1973,[1] Lynch was a writer and a contributing editor for The Body Politic.[4]
In 1974, he taught the first gay studies course offered at a Canadian university, through the University of Toronto's School of Continuing Education.[3] He was a founding member of the Toronto chapters of Gay Alliance Toward Equality and the Gay Academic Union,[5] and a founding member of Gay Fathers Toronto.[2] In 1980, he convened the first academic conference on the topic of Walt Whitman's 1880 visit to London, Ontario.[6] He helped found the Toronto Centre for Lesbian and Gay Studies (now the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies),[3] which continues to offer an annual academic grant in his name.[7]
He published a collection of poetry, These Waves of Dying Friends, in 1989.[8]
At the time of his death, he had an unfinished gay studies manuscript, The Age of Adhesiveness: From Friendship to Homosexuality, in development.[1] The book was an expansion of an earlier academic paper, for which he won Crompton-Noll Award from the Lesbian and Gay Caucus of the Modern Languages Association in 1981.[1] He also served as the editor of the Lesbian and Gay Caucus's Gay Studies Newsletter.[1]
Personal life
Lynch married Gail Lynch (née Jones) on July 5, 1969.[2] At this point, he had known for years that he was attracted to men; he had told Gail as much, and they both agreed that his attraction to men did not deter them from wanting to be married.[2] He moved to Toronto with Jones in 1971 in order to take a job as an English professor at the University of Toronto.[1][2] Lynch and Gail had a son, Stefan, in 1972.[2] Lynch came out as a gay man in 1973,[1] and in 1977, he and Gail separated.[2]
Lynch was a close friend of fellow queer studies scholar Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Sedgwick wrote her May 1991 essay "White Glasses" as a memorial for Lynch while he was still alive.[9] Lynch ultimately died later that same year, on July 9, 1991.[6]
Activism
Lynch was a committed AIDS activist from the dawn of the AIDS crisis in 1981 until his death in 1991,[10][2] including as a founding member of AIDS Action Now!,[11] the AIDS Committee of Toronto[11] and the AIDS Memorial in Toronto's Barbara Hall Park.[12]
