PhD Candidate
J. Seth Anderson is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at Boston University working with Professor Bruce Schulman. His interests are varied and include Urban History, Western History, Russian History, Mormon History, and the History of Sexuality. His dissertation, “Straight Talk: Elite Universities and the Genesis of Gay Conversion Therapy” explores the relationship between academia and the state in creating and reinforcing ideas of sexual orientation change efforts across space and time and how this process made visible the abstract tensions between “expert authority” and individual choices as they relate to sexual identities.
He completed his MA at the University of Utah where he researched the history of HIV/AIDS in the state of Utah and its effects on individuals, families, medical care, and activism. In 2012 he started a tea business in Salt Lake City that he sold in 2017. He has published two books with Arcadia Publishing, Downtown Phoenix and LGBT Salt Lake. In his free time, he likes to play piano. He and his husband, Dr. Michael Ferguson were the first same-sex coupled legally married in Utah in December 2013.