Historian, Iowan, Backpacker
Margot Canaday is an award-winning historian who studies gender and sexuality in modern America. Her first book, “The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth Century America,” offers a history of how the federal government first encountered homosexuality, decided it was a social problem and developed policies to regulate it. Her second book, “Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America,” explores the ways that the workplace has mattered for queer people over time, both as a site of vulnerability and exploitation but sometimes also of deep meaning.