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Stephen Vider's research examines the social practices and politics of everyday life in the 20th-century United States, with a focus on intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. His first book,  (University of Chicago Press, 2021), traces how American conceptions of the home have shaped LGBTQ relationships and politics from 1945 to the present. The book received honorable mentions for the 2022 John Hope Franklin Prize from the American Studies Association for best book in American Studies and the 2022 Alan Bray for best book in LGBTQ Studies, given jointly by the Queer/Trans Caucus of the American Studies Association and the Gay and Lesbian Quarterly Caucus of the Modern Language Association. It was also one of six finalists for the Huntington Library’s biennial Shapiro Prize for the best first scholarly monograph in U.S. history. He is currently working on a new book tentatively titled On Our Own: Deinstitutionalization and the Politics of Care Since 1945, examining the aftermath of psychiatric deinstitutionalization and the rise of community mental health in the United States.

Vider has also contributed to a range of public history projects. At the Museum of the City of New York, he curated the exhibition AIDS at Home: Art and Everyday Activism (2017), exploring how activists and artists have mobilized domestic space and redefined family in response to HIV/AIDS, from the 1980s to the present. , a short film he co-directed with Nate Lavey for the exhibition, has since been featured in film festivals and programs in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and Istanbul. Vider was also co-curator of the exhibition Gay Gotham: Art and Underground Culture in New York (2016­) and co-author of an accompanying book, a Lambda Literary Award finalist. He is currently working on a new exhibition on lesbian feminist architecture for the Center for Architecture in New York, to open in Summer 2025. He has published essays in the New York Times, Avidly, Time, and Slate, among other places.

Before coming to Bryn Mawr, Vider was an Associate Professor of History with tenure and founding director of the Public History Initiative at Cornell University. He received his PhD in History of American Civilization from Harvard University and has held fellowships at Yale University and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.