Joseph Plaster

Joseph Plaster is the Director of the Winston Tabb Special Collections Research Center and Curator in Public Humanities at Johns Hopkins University’s Sheridan Libraries & University Museums. His work bridges academia and community through participatory projects like the Peabody Ballroom Experience and San Francisco ACT UP Oral History Project. He holds a PhD in American Studies from Yale University with a focus on gender, sexuality, and race. His research examines marginalized communities' world-making practices, particularly LGBTQ+ youth in urban environments. Plaster has authored Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco’s Tenderloin (2023), exploring survival networks among queer youth. He has received awards including the American Historical Association’s Allan Bérubé Prize (2010) and the National Council on Public History’s Outstanding Public History Project Award (2023). His teaching spans queer performativity, public history, and social justice, emphasizing collaborative knowledge production.

Education:

• PhD in American Studies, Yale University (2018)
• MA and MPhil in American Studies, Yale University (2013)
• Certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Yale University (2018)

Research Interests: Public humanities methods, oral history, queer kinship networks, urban marginalization, LGBTQ+ activism, and intersections of gender, race, and sexuality. His work challenges mainstream historical narratives to center marginalized voices.

Key Projects:

• Peabody Ballroom Experience: Collaborates with Baltimore’s ballroom community, blending performance and history.
• ACT UP San Francisco Oral History Project: Documents LGBTQ+ AIDS activism.
• Polk Street: Lives in Transition: Explored gentrification’s impact on LGBTQ+ communities.

Grants & Funding: NEH, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New York Public Library, and CUNY Graduate Center grants have supported his research.

Labs & Initiatives: Leads the Trans Histories Lab at JHU, focusing on non-extractive trans history research in Baltimore/DC.