QNOHP Team
Staff
Mary Rizzo is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University-Newark. She also consults with nonprofit history and cultural organizations, including the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, the Tuckerton Seaport, and the NJ State Museum. She comes to this position after a decade of working in public history and the public humanities in New Jersey. Her primary motivation has been helping small and medium-sized history, humanities, and cultural organizations build their capacity and professionalize so they can tell more inclusive stories that fully represent our communities. Projects along these lines include the Public History Boot Camp series at MARCH, the Telling Untold Histories unconference, and the Queer Newark Oral History Project to document the history of the LGBT community in Newark.
Co-Director Kristyn Scorsone (they/them) is a lecturer in the History department at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and Newark and a public historian with the Queer Newark Oral History Project and the Humanities Action Lab. They received their PhD in American Studies at Rutgers University-Newark. Their dissertation, A Way Out of No Way: The Labor and Activism of Black Queer and Transgender People in Newark, New Jersey, 1970s to the present is an interdisciplinary work centered on Black feminisms, LGBTQ+ studies, labor studies, cultural history, urban history, and studies of capitalism.
Since joining the Queer Newark Oral History Project in 2015 they have conducted over forty oral histories, given numerous talks, workshops, interviews, and presentations, designed and led Queer Newark walking tours, co-curated the 2017 traveling exhibit, At Home in Newark: Stories from the Queer Newark Oral History Project, and produced and hosted the Queer Newark podcast. Their writing has appeared in The Public Historian, The Journal of the History of Sexuality, The Star-Ledger, History@ Work, Notches: (re)marks on the history of sexuality, OutHistory, and Out in New Jersey. They also have a chapter in the award winning book, Queer Newark: Stories of Resistance, Love, and Community edited by Dr. Whitney Strub. For more info, check out their website: kristynscorsone.com
Timothy Stewart-Winter (he/him) associate professor of history at Rutgers University–Newark, is a historian of sexuality, gender, and politics in modern America. His work examines LGBTQ activism, electoral and presidential politics, public policy, and policing.
He is the author of Outed: LBJ’s Confidant and the Arrest That Transformed a Presidency (University of Chicago Press, 2026), which tells the story of Walter Jenkins, one of President Lyndon Johnson’s closest aides, and uses his 1964 arrest and resignation to illuminate the sexual politics of the Cold War, the Lavender Scare, and the 1960s. His first book, Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), received the John Boswell Prize and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. His writing has appeared in publications including the New York Times and Los Angeles Times and he has been interviewed on NPR’s “All Things Considered.”
Stewart-Winter has written and taught about civil rights, the Stonewall riots, HIV/AIDS, same-sex marriage, trans history, and the history and memory of 9/11. He is a co-director of the Queer Newark Oral History Project and has contributed to museum exhibitions, documentary films, arts collaborations, and programs for K–12 teachers. He was inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame in 2017 and was a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History.
Christina R. Strasburger (she/her) is an administrative and academic professional with over two decades of experience. As Department Administrator for History and Africana Studies at Rutgers University-Newark, she provides a range of education, information, and advocacy services for students, faculty, staff, and community.
She is co-founder of the award-winning Queer Newark Oral History Project, a community-directed initiative dedicated to recording and preserving the history of LGBTQ+ people in and of Newark, New Jersey. She has conducted oral history interviews; facilitated oral history workshops; hosted public programs with community partners; co-led Queer Newark walking tours; drafted grant proposals, and consulted on the traveling exhibit, At Home in Newark: Stories from the Queer Newark Oral History Project.
Christina’s work to ensure that marginalized people are respected and valued, and the bridges she builds between communities within Rutgers and between Rutgers and the city of Newark was recognized with an inaugural 2022 Rutgers Beloved Community Award. In recent years, she has also received the JanHerman Veenker Circle of Friends Award, a Black Organization of Students’ Betty Shabazz Certificate of Education, an Advising Matters’ Student Advising Award, a Women’s History Month Committee’s “Sheroe” of Newark Award, Rutgers College Class of ’62 Presidential Public Service Award, Staff Excellence Award, and the President’s Recognition Award for outstanding service and contribution to the university community.
Whitney Strub is Associate Professor of History and Director of Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University-Newark. His first book, Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right, was published by Columbia University Press in 2010. His second book, Obscenity Rules: Roth v. United States and the Long Struggle over Sexual Expression was published in 2013 by the University Press of Kansas. His articles on obscenity, pornography, and sexual politics have appeared in American Quarterly, Radical History Review, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Journal of Women's History, Salon, and Temple of Schlock, and he blogs about films shot in Newark and sexual politics at https://strublog.wordpress.com.
Phoenix Sherling (they/he) is a history MA student at Rutgers-Newark specializing in queer history, music history, labor history, and the ways they intersect. He moved to Newark last year from Indiana, where he grew up and attended undergrad at IU Bloomington. They have a BA in history and in classical civilizations, and hope to continue their academic career and work with the QNOHP at Rutgers after finishing their master’s degree. He is passionate about documenting queer history for the good of humanity as well as the good of future scholars of queer history. They live in Newark with their partner and cat, and are looking forward to continuing to work with and for the queer community served by the Project!
Marissa Myers (she/her) is a second-year History master's student at Rutgers University–Newark. Her academic interests focus on world history, with particular attention to the impact of colonialism on social formations.
Volunteers
Mi Hyun Yoon (she/her) is a PhD candidate in American Studies at Rutgers University-Newark. Mi Hyun's research looks at the history of the Korean diaspora in the United States through the transnational context of Asian America and Korea.
Aaron Frazier is a poet and writer. He self-published two chap books and writes for La Raine Magazine and several other local and national publications. He holds a BS in Urban Studies Policy from Saint Peters College in Jersey City and an Associates in Liberal Arts-Social Sciences from Essex County College. He is a community activist, the Mother of the House of Divine of Greater Newark, a volunteer for the Newark LBGTQ Community Center, a previous Coordinator of Project Fire II of El Club Del Barrio, and an active member of Hyacinth Cab and Thrive Role Model Story, a long term non progressor study participant with the National Institute for Health, and community activist.
Esperanza O. Santos is a PhD Candidate in the American Studies Program at Rutgers University-Newark as a Presidential Graduate Fellow. Her topics of interest include: women of color feminisms, social movements, critical pedagogy, phenomenology, & decoloniality.
Erica Fugger (she/her) is an oral historian and peace educator based in the New York City area. She actively works with organizations, communities, and families to implement historical documentation and dialogue initiatives.
Erica previously managed Columbia University’s Center for Oral History Archives and Oral History MA program, and served as an Alliance for Historical Dialogue and Accountability Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights. She also recently directed Washington College’s World War II public memory program, the National Home Front Project, which collaborates with communities across the United States to document and preserve civilian experiences of the war.
Erica is continuing to explore the lasting impact of World War II through doctoral work in Rutgers University-Newark’s American Studies PhD program. Her research builds upon foundations established through her MA degree in Oral History from Columbia University and her BA in History & German from Union College. Deepening her community-engaged practice, Erica currently serves as a graduate assistant for the Queer Newark Oral History Project.
Moira Armstrong Moira Armstrong is a PhD student in American Studies at Rutgers University - Newark. They received a BA in English and history with a minor in LGBTQ studies from Kent State University in 2022 and an MA in gender, sexuality, and culture from Birkbeck, University of London in 2023. Additionally, for the past two years, they worked as a research assistant for Queer Pandemic, an oral history project collecting the stories of queer people in the United Kingdom during COVID-19. Their research interests include queer and disability studies, oral and public history, the COVID-19 pandemic, and asexuality and aromanticism.