When Joanne Passet was pursuing a graduate degree in history at University of Wisconsin, she found herself in a women's history seminar, considering an unusual, and defining, choice.

"At the time, I was strictly a 19th century historian," says Passet. "As I recall, there were only two 19th century topics on the suggested list of seminar topics: free love and pornography. I decided on the former topic."

That seminar paper led Passet, who already held a doctorate in library science, to write her third book, Sex Radicals and the Quest for Women's Equality, which demonstrates "how 19th-century sex radical women challenged the restrictive mores of society and helped shape modern feminist conceptions of sex and gender," she says.

Passet's studies also led her to Indiana University Bloomington, where she began to delve deeply into the life of Jeannette Howard Foster, the first librarian of The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana University (1948-52) who gained notoriety as an innovative researcher of lesbian literature.

"Little did I know at the time how significant her life and career would prove to be," says Passet, who is now a professor of history at Indiana University East in Richmond. "Foster not only recognized herself as a homosexual in the 1910s, but also possessed a highly positive sense of self and the confidence she needed to counter the powerful forces of homophobia that dominated American culture during much of her lifespan."

Passet describes Foster as an adept scholar who devoted more than two decades of her life to the search for examples of lesbians, bisexuals, and cross-dressers in literary works.

"In 1956 she risked her livelihood by boldly self-publishing Sex Variant Women in Literature, a book that became the foundation text for lesbian, and then queer studies," Passet says.

Passet's portrait of Foster, Sex Variant Woman: The Life of Jeanette Howard Foster, was published by Da Capo Press in June 2008.

Passet is the first to document the life of Foster and the impact she has made in literature. For years, Passet painstakingly gathered letters, diaries, and books written by Foster, spending countless hours deciphering code names and pseudonyms.

"As a lesbian concerned about protecting the identities of her correspondents, Foster destroyed many of her personal papers in the early 1970s before she entered a nursing home. Fortunately, she was a voracious correspondent and her letters to others have survived in a number of archives and manuscripts repositories throughout the nation," Passet says. "It took quite a bit of detective work, however, to decode the references she made to others, and to locate the works she published under four different pseudonyms."

Joanne Passet

In her effort to preserve an accurate account of Foster's life, Passet talked to several surviving colleagues and family members. "I was very fortunate to have the support of her open-minded niece and nephew, who were not aware of her lesbian identity at the time I began this research. Thanks to them, I gained access to family photographs, correspondence, and diaries," Passet said. "I also was able to gain the trust and confidence of Foster's friends who were still living, and many of them were quite generous with their time and insights. The challenge of reconciling history and memory arose because a significant amount of the information for this book was generated in the 1970s and beyond."

Passet's research on Foster has led to a new project for the historian: examining the influence of the bestselling book Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence. The book was reprinted as a mass paperback, optioned for an ABC-TV movie, and translated into Italian, Dutch, German, Portuguese, and several other languages.

"The book stirred controversy as it raised awareness of lesbians in society," Passet says. "My next project, exploring the impact of this book on its editors, contributors, and readers, will serve as a window into the feminist movement and feminist publishing during the last quarter of the 20th century."

Recently, Passet was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and will travel to Nha Trang University in Vietnam in 2009, where she will teach United States history to students at the university located about 800 miles south of Hanoi, on the coast of the South China Sea. She also will serve as a consultant in library development and give guest lectures in other areas of Vietnam.