Author: Elspeth Brown

Digitizing Archival Cassette Tapes: A Brief How-To

May 22, 2018
by Elspeth Brown
Digitization

Between 1981 and 1986, The Foolscap Gay Oral History Project collected over 100 oral histories with Canadian gay men born in the first half of the 20th century. These interviews, conducted by John Grube and Lionel Collier, were informed by conditions contemporaneous to the project: Operation Soap (police harassment of gay men), HIV/ AIDS, and the proliferation of queer community spaces and groups in Toronto. These interviews were originally recorded on cassette tapes, which have […]

Trans Oral Histories: the Transgender History Project of the Upper Midwest

December 30, 2017
by Elspeth Brown
Archiving Oral History / Trans History

I realize that even though the website has a fantastic collection of websites concerning LGBTQ oral history, put together by Cait McKinney, I have not actually had the time to go through them all, and reflect on what they offer. I’m in the process of putting together a new course on Queer and Trans Oral History, and this seems like a perfect moment to explore some of these sites and reflect on some of their […]

Where Once Stood a Bandstand for Cruising & Shelter

October 5, 2017
by Elspeth Brown
Foolscap Project / Gay History

This past weekend, Toronto was alive throughout the night for Nuit Blanche, an annual night-time arts festival. The city was transformed by four large-scale exhibitions installed across the city that brought together contemporary art reflecting on revolution, activism, indigeneity and futurity. Carried out as a part of the “Taking to the Streets” exhibition for Nuit Blanche Toronto 2017, interdisciplinary artist (and CLGA volunteer!) Hazel Meyer dropped banners throughout the night from the stop of a […]

Zine Digitization and Accessibility

July 18, 2017
by Elspeth Brown
Digitization / Mirha-Soleil Ross Project / Public Humanities / Trans History

A potential benefit of digitizing zines is increasing their accessibility. While a physical copy of Mirha-Soleil Ross’ gendertrash from hell might be hard to come by for many people in 2017, putting a high quality scan of the zine online makes it accessible to anyone with an internet connection, right? Not really. Depending on the context, “access” can take on very different meanings. I think we should think critically about what it means to make […]

Some Thoughts on Michelle Mohabeer’s Child-Play (1997)

July 6, 2017
by Elspeth Brown
Desh Pardesh Project

TW: Description of a film that deals with child abuse Some Thoughts on Child-Play: a self indulgent rant by an over-eager cinema student We’ve been struggling to make our digital exhibition on SAVAC’s Not a Place on the Map Desh Pardesh oral history project more visual. The oral history interviews are riveting, but as an audience, it’d be hard to stay interested in around 36 hours of raw tapes. I was surprised and excited to […]

Touring SAVAC and Vtape

June 8, 2017
by Elspeth Brown
Collaboratory News / Desh Pardesh Project

And update from Amal Khurram, who is participating in the undergraduate Scholars in Residence Digital Collections lab in partnership with the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives. Scholars in Residence group pose in the SAVAC / Vtape archives. (L to R) Mac Stewart, Amal Khurram, Caleigh Inman, Saj Soomal (SAVAC), Alisha Krishna, Zohar Freeman, Cait McKinney. On May 17 our group went to visit the 401 Richmond building for a tour of the South Asian Visual Arts […]