Prof. Lane Fenrich teaches his lectures sitting on the counter tops of Tech, animatedly gesturing and joking with his students about the kinds of guys he’s into. Described by students as funny and energetic, the gay and lesbian history professor shows enthusiasm for the subject in and out of the classroom.

“It’s obvious I have personal interest in the matter,” he says. “As a scholar there is something very exciting about participating in work that is cutting edge, and that’s what this is.”

While a graduate student here in the early ’90s, Fenrich had the opportunity to sit in on the first gay and lesbian history class taught at Northwestern, which also happened to be one of the first in the country. He says he loves that he was able to watch this field develop from the very beginning.

Gay and lesbian studies have “redefined many of the basic questions that we ask and pushed other people who don’t study gay and lesbian experience to think about their topics in different ways,” he says. Fenrich says introducing his students to a subject they have never been exposed to is one of the best parts of the job.

“My students have never had classes in gay and lesbian history so they are just very eager for the information,” he says. “Everything is new, and it’s often surprising to them. That’s also very gratifying as a teacher.”

Students say Fenrich is passionate about his work as both a scholar and a teacher. He attempts to get to know as many students as he can and engage them in lecture, an impressive feat for a class of nearly 170 students.

“I’m a ham, and I love being in front of a really large group,” he says.

Off campus, he is working on a project about the ’90s debates on same sex marriage and interracial marriage. He continues research on how the debates over gay rights affected dialogue on African-American’s rights. Specifically, he will explore connections between the similar rhetoric of gay rights activists and people who were anti-affirmative action, hoping these connections will push people to look at these struggles in a new light.

In addition to gay and lesbian history, Fenrich has taught U.S. history survey courses and is an assistant dean of Weinberg. Balancing his job as dean and teaching can be tricky, he says, so he picks gay and lesbian history to make sure it’s offered at all. Though Fenrich has a Ph.D. in U.S. history from NU, he says other professors have expertise in American history, so he knows those classes will be taken care of.

Fenrich has been on the full-time faculty since 1994, a position he says he was lucky to get. “Academic jobs are very rarely about what you want, they’re about what’s out there,” says Fenrich, laughing in his office chair. “You hope to get the very best, and I think I did.”