Nicholas Hrynyk

Nicholas Hrynyk

Dr. Nicholas (Nick) Hrynyk is an interdisciplinary scholar trained in History, Women’s and Gender Studies, Queer Studies, and Social Justice. His research interests include queer history, disability studies (past and present), feminist and gender studies, critical race studies, and visual culture. Nick’s research is two-fold: He examines important intersections of disability activism in the queer community with the work of anti-racist activists of the time period. The overlap occurring around disability and anti-racist advocacy in the queer community was primarily the result of AIDS activism of the 1980s. The racialization of the AIDS epidemic and discourses around disease and normative “healthy” bodies that following has created an enduring collision between health and disability that continues to exist with the queer community. This trauma is the focus of an upcoming co-authored manuscript on anticipating violence from outside and within the queer community, tentatively titled: Anticipated Violence and the Queer Subject (Concordia University Press).

His historical research examines cultural anxieties around gender, sexuality, ability, race, and desire in Canada’s LGBT community through the lens of aesthetics and “queer style” in order to show the slow unravelling of a unified image of gay liberation over the course of the 1970s and 1980s. This is the focus of his forthcoming book: Politic-ing the Body: The Aesthetics of Masculinity During Gay Liberation, 1971-1987 (under contract with University of Toronto Press), and an article with Disability Studies Quarterly (2021).

Teaching Philosophy

Nick’s teaching is scholarly and evidenced-based, drawing from his own interdisciplinary training and research in Women’s and Gender Studies, Critical Race Studies, Disability Studies, and History. He teaches holistic courses that are designed to advance students’ intellectual capacities; their professional skills, and their analytic eye. He does so through an active engagement in Feminist and anti-racist commitments to collaboration, promoting a model of learning focused on reciprocity rather than grades; on building one another up rather than competing.

Classes Regularly Taught

WGST 1300: Imagining Women

WGST/SJST 1400: Queer Activism

WGST/HIST 2510: History of Women’s Movements in North America

WGST/HIST 3340: Marriage and Gender

Opportunities for Students to Work with Dr. Hrynyk

Undergraduate Students: 

Students may have the opportunity to work as a Teaching Assistant for some of Dr. Hrynyk’s courses.

Abbreviated CV

SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Historical Studies, University of Toronto

Ph.D. History, Carleton University

M.A. History, University of Windsor

B.A. History, University of Windsor

Recent Publications:

Hrynyk, Nicholas. (2022). “2SLGBTQ+ Memorial” in Monumental Memories: A Critical Reading of Memorials, Monuments, and Statues in Canada’s Capital Region, edited by Tonya Davidson and David Dean. McGill-Queens’s University Press (forthcoming).

Hrynyk, Nicholas. (2021). “No Sorrow, No Pity”: Intersections of Disability, HIV/AIDS, and Gay Male Masculinity in the 1980s,” Disability Studies Quarterly 42, no. 2 (June 2021):  https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/7148/5950).  

Hrynyk, Nicholas (2015). “Strutting Like a Peacock: Masculinity, Consumerism, and Men’s Fashion in Toronto, 1966-1972.” Journal of Canadian Studies 49, no. 3 (Fall 2015): 76-110.

Books in Progress:

Hrynyk, Nicholas. Politic-ing the Body: The Aesthetics of Masculinity During Gay Liberation, 1971-1987. University of Toronto Press (forthcoming).

Hrynyk, Nicholas, and Celeste E. Orr. Anticipated Violence and the Queer Subject. Book proposal accepted by Concordia University Press.