Dr. Bill Leap

Dr. William L. Leap

 

Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the American University

Affiliate Professor in the Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Florida Atlantic University

 

William L. Leap, PhD, is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the American University (Washington, DC) and an Affiliate Professor in the Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Florida Atlantic University (Boca Raton, FL). He is the founding senior editor of the Journal of Language & Sexuality and, since 1993, has coordinated the annual program of the Lavender Language Conference (www.american.edu/cas/anthropology/lavender-languages ). His writings about language and sexuality address topics as varied as race/class inequities, gender differences, language socialization, homophobia/hate speech, gay pornography, trans-national circulations, subaltern voice, and problems of queer historiography. Key publications include American Indian English (1993), Word’s Out: Gay Men’s English (1996), Out in Public: Reinventing Lesbian/Gay Anthropology in a Globalizing World (co-edited with Ellen Lewin), Speaking in Queer Tongues: Gay Language and Globalization (co-edited with Tom Boellstorff), and the widely reprinted papers “Language, socialization and silence in gay adolescence’, “Queering gay men’s English”, and “Homophobia as moral geography.” He is currently completing a multi-disciplinary study of language, identity and same-sex desire in the US military, in Renaissance-era Harlem, in women’s softball teams, in cruising sites, and in other locations “before” Stonewall.