» To learn more about the Phil Zwickler Memorial Research Grants at Cornell, please click here.

Since 2002, the foundation has supported Phil Zwickler Memorial Research Fellow Grants at Cornell University. These grants have offered select scholars financial assistance for expenses incurred when they conduct research on sexuality with sources in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at the Cornell University Library. The Phil Zwickler Memorial Research Fellow Grants, made possible through the generosity of the Phil Zwickler Charitable and Memorial Foundation Trust, have assisted numerous exciting projects. Applications are due annually by March 31.


Please click on the images to read letters written by the Cornell Fellows, each of whom were recipients of a Zwickler Charitable and Memorial Foundation Trust Grant.


Stefanie Snider 		Our two 2007 fellow letters come from Stefanie Snider, who was referred by Richard Meyer ('03), and Scott Morgensen, our first repeat winner. In addition, our 2005 winner, Richard M. Juang, recently published a book called "Transgender Rights."
Scott Morgensen
Tim Retzloff

Richard Meyer
Christina B. Hanhardt
Gill Frank
Richard M. Juang
Richard M. Juang


Sex in the Stacks 		In the first year of the Fellowship Grant program at Cornell, the grants were awarded during a two day seminar in September 2002. Please click on the image to see the imaginative poster that was designed for the seminar.


» To visit the Phil Zwickler Collection at Cornell, please click here.


Brenda Marston
Director of the Human Sexuality Collection at Cornell University 		  An Introduction by Brenda Marston

Phil Zwickler's archives are housed in Cornell University Library's Human Sexuality Collection. Brenda Marston heads this program and for 15 years has been building a wonderful research facility for scholars of sexuality.

In 2004, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Alumni Council of the Wisconsin Alumni Association honored Brenda with its Distinguished Alumni Award. The GLBT Alumni Council honors University of Wisconsin-Madison graduates who have shown an exemplary commitment to the GLBT community and who have demonstrated excellence in their life's work as a self-identified GLBT person or ally.

As curator of Cornell University's Human Sexuality Collection, Marston has, in the words of a former UW professor, "created space in the public sphere for a series of historical voices that were heretofore suppressed by a largely homophobic culture. Without the kind of resources Brenda has collected and profiled, these voices would not be heard, and thus, to a larger society, they would not even appear to exist. Brenda has, in effect, created a large part of the historical record that contemporaries and historians will have to study to understand the present."

Part of the genius of this collection is that it brings together so many varied and relevant collections, allowing researchers in Cornell's reading room to gain perspective on national trends in sexual politics and gay culture over the course of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Valuable records of Latinos, African-Americans, and other people of color strengthen the Collection, and its depth is further augmented by international periodicals and by the holdings of Cornell's Rare Book collection.

Research is made easier by the online Sexuality Research Guide, by special bibliographies, by a database of the popular fiction and periodicals, and by the research grants funded by the Zwickler Foundation.

Remarkably, the Collection has no backlog. All of its collections are cataloged and available to researchers. Descriptions and box lists for each collection are available online (http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/browselists/humsx.html). New collections are cataloged as they come in.

Brenda is always eager to hear from people with new collecting ideas. She attends the national Creating Change conference sponsored by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to be able to talk with activists about their issues and ideas. A few categories of material she is currently seeking include:

  • papers of long-time HIV/AIDS survivors (letters, diaries, photo albums, notes reflecting the experience of people who have been living with HIV/AIDS for a long time now),
  • papers of Intersex and transgender activists,
  • records of national bisexual rights organizations,
    • documents from same-sex couples' marriages around the country (photographs, copies of whatever legal forms were signed, wedding announcements, congratulations cards, rejection letters for marriage applications, etc.), as well as records of marriage equality activism,
    • the tapes and transcripts from oral history projects, especially those documenting issues of race and sexual/gender identity, and
    • the papers and libraries of long-time gay and lesbian activists.