William L. Leap

William Leap’s career in public anthropology has included work with American Indian tribes (community organizing, language renewal, teaching retraining), engagements with language, sexuality, and HIV politics in the urban US and urban South Africa, studies of gay language and “gay men’s English” as local and global formations, and multiple projects (at AU, in DC, in the American Anthropological Association and in other public settings) designed to build alliances between dissident gendered and sexual voices. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Language and Sexuality.

Since 1993, he has coordinated the annual AU Conference on Lavender Languages and Linguistics. He has published seven books and edited collections and numerous essays in language and sexuality studies. He is currently finishing the edits on his new book, "Language Before Stonewall." Not in residence, 2016-2017.