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Michael Lynch (professor)

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Michael Lynch
Born1944 (1944)
Dunn, North Carolina, U.S.
DiedJuly 9, 1991(1991-07-09) (aged 46–47)
EducationGoddard College
University of Iowa
Occupations
Years active1971–1991
EmployerUniversity of Toronto
Organizations
Spouse
Gail Lynch
​
​
(m. 1969; sep. 1977)​
Children1

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]

Early life and education

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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

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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

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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

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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]

Honours and awards

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In honour of his role as a significant contributor to LGBT culture and history in Canada, a portrait of Lynch by Gerald Hannon is held by The ArQuives: Canada's LGBTQ2+ Archives' National Portrait Collection.[10]

A biography of Lynch, AIDS Activist: Michael Lynch and the Politics of Community, was published by Ann Silversides in 2003.[13]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon, Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History, vol. 2: From World War II to the Present Day. Routledge, 2005. ISBN 9781134583133.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Silversides, Ann (2004). AIDS Activist: Michael Lynch and the Politics of Community. Toronto: Between the Lines. ISBN 978-1-896357-73-7.
  3. ^ a b c "Out & Proud". U of T Magazine, Summer 2009.
  4. ^ "It Seems All Right to Him to Care for His Son, but Society Doesn't Agree, Homosexual Says". The Globe and Mail, March 30, 1978.
  5. ^ McLeod, Donald (1996). Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada: A Selected Annotated Chronology, 1964–1975. Toronto: ECW Press/Homewood Books. pp. 7, 119. ISBN 1550222732.
  6. ^ a b "Inventory of the Michael Lynch Papers (Fonds)" (finding aid). Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, November 14, 1996. Archived from the original on February 3, 2007.
  7. ^ "Lynch Grant". Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies. Archived from the original on 2025-01-26. Retrieved 2025-04-08.
  8. ^ Judith Lawrence Pastore, Confronting AIDS Through Literature: The Responsibilities of Representation. University of Illinois Press, 1993. ISBN 9780252062940.
  9. ^ Pearl, Monica (2010-11-05) [originally published 2003-01]. "Eve Sedgwick's melancholic "White glasses'". Textual Practice. 17 (1): 61–80. doi:10.1080/0950236032000050744. ISSN 0950-236X.
  10. ^ a b "Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, National Portrait Collection". CLGA. 2002. Retrieved 2017-04-03.
  11. ^ a b "Gay Activist Michael Lynch Helped Found AIDS Groups". Toronto Star, July 11, 1991.
  12. ^ "It's for One Person to Have a Cry, or a Thousand People to Hold a Demonstration.". The Globe and Mail, January 5, 1991.
  13. ^ "AIDS Activist: Michael Lynch and the Politics of Community, by Ann Silversides". Quill & Quire, August 2003.
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