Mori Reithmayr

D.Phil. in Politics

I'm a DPhil student in Politics at New College. My DPhil thesis 'Community before Liberation: Theorizing Gay Resistance in San Francisco, 1953-1969' is located within the tradition of queer intellectual history. It retraces the early history of the idea of a gay 'community' in 1950s and 1960s San Francisco, its origin as a radical political project fighting antigay policing, and its gradual co-optation over the course of the decade by white, middle class, gender conforming gay men.

Informed by this historical lens, my research also approaches more abstract questions concerning the conditions in which discursive shifts can succeed and sustain their world-making potential, and how we can build communities across gender, race, class, gender identity and performance to help each other survive, resist and transform dominant political imaginaries and realities.

From 2019 to 2021, I served as a co-convenor of the Oxford Queer Research Network (now: Queer Intersections Oxford).