Myrl Beam

Myrl Beam is an associate professor and chair of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department at Macalester College. Beam’s work focuses on queer and trans movements for justice U.S. since 1960. His first book, Gay, Inc.: The Nonprofitization of Queer Politics, was published in 2018 by the University of Minnesota Press and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in LGBT Studies.

Beam is currently working on two projects: the first, a history of contemporary trans movements for justice entitled “Before the Tipping Point,” is drawn from oral histories with trans activists conducted while a fellow with the Tretter Trans Oral History Project; the second is a community-based and collaborative public history project entitled “The Long Fire at Lake and Minnehaha,” which explores the longer, queerer history of the intersection surrounding the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct, which burned during the Uprising following the 2020 police murder of George Floyd.

Beam’s work has appeared in Scholar and Feminist, Space and Society, The Oral History Review, as well as the edited collection Queer Activism After Marriage Equality. In addition to his scholarly work, Beam is active in queer and trans leftist movements, specifically around issues of prison abolition, houselessness, and supporting the leadership of trans youth in movements for justice.