Julio Capó, Jr.
Julio Capó, Jr. is associate professor of History and the Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab at Florida International University in Miami. Capó researches inter-American histories, with a focus on queer, Latinx, race, immigration, and empire studies. His book, Welcome to Fairyland: Queer Miami before 1940 (2017), has received six honors, including the Charles S. Sydnor award from the Southern Historical Association for the best book written on the U.S. South. He recently curated an award-winning exhibition at HistoryMiami Museum titled Queer Miami: A History of LGBTQ Communities. His work has appeared in the Journal of American History, Radical History Review, Diplomatic History, Journal of American Ethnic History, and Modern American History. A former journalist, he has also written for Time, The Washington Post, The Miami Herald, El Nuevo Día (Puerto Rico), and several other outlets. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of American History, is co-chair of the Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender History, and has held fellowships at Yale University and the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.
FEATURED LECTURE
Undesirables: A Queer History of Latinx Challenges to U.S. Immigration Policy
OAH Lectures by Julio Capó, Jr.
This lecture explores what we stand to learn when we break away from histories bounded by national boundaries. In revealing the Cold War origins of debates surrounding gay rights, gun control, and shifting urban power among Cuban immigrants in Miami, this lecture n of their arrival in urban politics. Miami’s ruling class responded to this with greater hostility against the city’s growing Latina/o and racial communities.
This lecture introduces some of the key questions and challenges of doing public-facing work today. In strongly maintaining the importance and necessity of this kind of work, this talk offers lessons and insights from past experiences in doing journalism and mass media projects, museum and curatorial work, expert testimonies, and other forms of public history.
This lecture explores how queer immigrants and migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean have challenged U.S. immigration law from the 1880s until the present. In emphasizing moments of resistance and resilience, this lecture argues that immigration issues remain--and have historically been--queer issues.
Since its formal incorporation in 1896, Miami's status as a "fairyland" positioned just South of the U.S. South offers a unique opportunity to challenge some of the dominant narratives of a national LGBTQ past. In shifting attention to the transnational influences of the city's queer culture and movement, especially histories of empire-building, trade, tourism, and immigration, this lecture argues that Miami and its connections to the Americas have always been central to shaping some of the biggest debates in national LGBTQ history.