Clayton Howard

Clayton Howard earned his PhD from the University of Michigan in 2010, and he is a specialist in postwar U.S. history. His research interests include the histories of American cities, suburbs, gender, sexuality, and politics.  Before coming to Ohio State, he taught at the University of New Hampshire and the College of the Holy Cross.

 

In March 2019, the University of Pennsylvania Press published his book The Closet and the Cul-de-Sac: The Politics of Sexual Privacy in Northern California. This book uses the history of the San Francisco Bay Area from World War II to the late 1970s to explain the origins and scope of the nation’s culture wars over gay rights.

 

Howard’s article "Building a 'Family Friendly' Metropolis: Sexuality, the State, and Postwar Housing Policy" was published in the Journal of Urban History in September 2013. He has also written an essay on the history of the Log Cabin Republicans, the nation’s largest group of gay conservatives. It will appear in December 2019 in an anthology entitled Beyond the Politics of the Closet.

 

He is currently working on two new projects on U.S. history since the 1960s. One is an article on the history of sexuality and mortgage lending. The other is a new book project on gun violence and gun control activism.

 

Howard teaches classes on the history of American cities and suburbs (HIST3040), the Sexual Revolution and its legacies (HIST4010), modern American history (HIST2002), and U.S. history since the 1960s (HIST3016). He also teaches courses at the graduate level, including an urban history seminar (HIST7014).