Have we got a story for you! It is the story of the Amy Morris Homans Cotillion¹—a joyful, underground social gathering mostly for lesbian professionals attending the annual American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD, now SHAPE [Society of Health and Physical Educators]) Convention. The Cotillion began in 1982 and ended in 2014 and, until now, has never been written about. And to be clear, this is not our story. We simply have been entrusted with telling it.

Our involvement in this story began at the Western Society for Physical Education of College Women (WSPECW) annual conference in November 2022.² We (Maria and Diane) were in attendance as Jackie Hudson, Bobby Bennett, Karen DePauw, Emily Wughalter, and Linda Zwiren³ presented a panel on the Cotillion. This group included a founder and annual organizer of the Cotillion and some of the main organizers of the Pre-Cotillion social. Both of us were incredibly moved by their presentations and captivated by the history of this underground event. Maria knew a bit about the Cotillion from the late Joy DeSensi, her doctoral advisor and one of its cofounders, and was thrilled to learn more about it at a professional conference. Diane had heard about it from Jackie a few years earlier and thought, “Someone needs to write about this!” Later that day, while Maria was chatting with some of the panelists about recording oral histories and possibly collaborating on a future article about the event, WSPECW keynote speaker and incoming president of the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH) Sarah Fields asked Diane to organize a similar panel for the upcoming NASSH conference. “This is important, and a part of sport history, too,” Sarah noted. So, we teamed up, the panelists graciously placed their trust in us, and we proceeded to plan.

Over the next few months, we held Zoom calls (Zoom Video Communications, Inc.) with the panelists to learn more about their Cotillion experiences and plan for the NASSH conference. These fun, engaging meetings provided us with rich vignettes and valuable insights as the group reminisced and contextualized the Cotillion for us. The meetings also resulted in the beginnings of a list of potential interviewees to contact (thanks largely to the group’s collective memory and Jackie Hudson’s preserved mailing lists). To expand our understanding of the events beyond the perspective of hosts and organizers, we conducted 10 individual interviews with Cotillion attendees and AAHPERD members.⁴ In the following articles, we have used our Zoom calls and oral history interviews, combined with conference papers, panel presentations, Cotillion artifacts, and secondary source materials, to develop our narrative. All along, we have been in close contact with the original panelists, who had decided it was time to make public and more broadly “out” the Cotillion story—a decision they did not make lightly.

Our invited panel at the 2023 NASSH conference was powerfully received and led to these articles at the generous invitation of Dave Wiggins. About a month before the conference, he read our conference abstract and reached out to encourage us to consider publishing a history of the Cotillion in Kinesiology Review under his editorship. A long-time attendee of the AAHPERD Convention, he was unaware of the Cotillion, yet, as a social-justice advocate, saw the importance of this history to the field. Dave’s gesture is an important example of allyship, and we are certainly glad we took him up on his offer.

As social-justice-oriented scholars, we recognize how important it is to tell the stories of marginalized communities in our field, to detail the systemic discrimination within kinesiology that harmed women and LGBTQIA+ individuals, and in so doing, to hold the field accountable for this past while also advocating for a more equitable and inclusive future. Moreover, we are aware that these accounts, if they are told at all, typically focus on discrimination endured rather than firsthand experiences of community and joy that comprise counterpublic spaces. According to Black feminist scholar Brittney C. Cooper (2017), counterpublic spaces are communities wherein Black women could “contest official, dominant narratives that undermined them morally, intellectually, and politically” (p. 131). The Cotillion, as we learned from the oral history interviews we conducted, served as a similar kind of space for lesbians in kinesiology.⁵ Finally, and perhaps most simply, as members of the broader queer community, this story resonates with us on a deeply personal level. We see ourselves reflected in these histories (and share some of them) and relish these stories of joy, community, and celebration in the face of oppression for lesbians in sport, kinesiology, and physical education. Homophobia and homonegativism in women’s physical education and sport have held us, and by extension the field, back long enough, and there is much to learn from the Cotillion. Though we never attended a Cotillion (and wish we had), we are incredibly honored and excited to share these stories with a broader audience of kinesiologists.

The Cotillion was born during a time—the 1970s and 1980s—when the context for LGBTQIA+ people in the United States was changing as activists pushed hard for recognition of gay and lesbian rights and against the homophobia of the period. We know that where homophobia thrives, homonegative environments develop, institutionalizing oppression of LGBTQIA+ individuals (Krane, 1996; Krane & Barber, 2005). These oppressive environments have existed (and continue to exist) across society—including in sport, higher education, and our professional organizations. We have seen myriad examples—negative recruiting in women’s college basketball, lesbian coaches who remained deeply closeted for fear of losing their jobs, lesbian professors who risked retention and promotion if they dared live openly, the refusal of universities to offer dual career hires to same-sex couples, and LGBTQIA+ individuals who rarely experienced/experience a sense of safety and belonging at their professional academic conferences (see, e.g., Bartlett, 2002; Fowler & DePauw, 2005; Griffin, 1998; Krane & Barber, 2005).

The following articles capture the life-sustaining power of the Cotillion and Pre-Cotillion—safe, radical communities of joy made possible by personal and political acts of boldness that challenged and disrupted the institutionalized homophobia and misogyny of the field. The first article recounts the origin story of the Cotillion and Pre-Cotillion; the second focuses on the attendees’ experiences of the event; and the third contextualizes the Cotillion theoretically as an act of community building, joy, and resistance to oppression. We know that there are as many stories of the Cotillion as women who attended, and we hope people keep adding to these stories. Now, let us get this party started!