Henry Abelove, Willbur Fisk Osborne Emeritus Professor of English at Wesleyan University, will ask and try to answer this question: How and why and in what specific circumstances did the term “the closet”–as connoting a hidden life–first come into use among gay and lesbian Americans?

Professor Abelove is the co-editor of The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, which won the Lambda Prize, and he is the author of The Evangelist of Desire and Deep Gossip.