Aaron Aruck

I am a historian of the twentieth-century U.S.-Mexico borderlands. My research broadly explores how transnational efforts to police prostitution and sexual health shaped the experiences of homosexual and gender non-conforming people as they traversed the U.S.-Mexico border. My dissertation, “Tracking Contagious Cases: Venereal Disease, Sex Work, and the Making of the Male Homosexual at the US Mexico Border, 1920-1965,” examined venereal disease prevention campaigns in the border region from the interwar period through the 1960s. Highlighting the stories of border-crossing male sex workers, I showed how and why these public health initiatives, which initially targeted female sex workers and their male clients, paradoxically produced a racialized gay male migrant subjectivity.

I consider queer public history a critical part of my research and teaching. I worked with the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) Historical Society on various projects that highlighted Latinx queer histories and pre-Stonewall queer life. I look forward to working with students interested in queer history and curious about how we might use community archives as a form of activism.