Academia | LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory

All posts filed under: Academia

“histories ‘from below’”: A Conversation with Dr. Lucas Wilson

October 24, 2024

In this conversation with Dr. Lucas Wilson, a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Toronto Mississauga, we dive into his bold shift from Holocaust studies to queer history. Luke shares how his personal journey—from surviving conversion therapy at an evangelical university to embracing his queer identity—now fuels his groundbreaking research into white Christian nationalism and its impact on LGBTQ+ communities, offering a powerful voice against oppressive systems.

“Bisexual History is Queer History”: A Conversation with Gabryelle Iaconetti

August 28, 2024

by Alisha Stranges

Academia / Activist Histories / Bisexual History / Collaboratory News / Queer History

Meet Gabryelle Iaconetti, a passionate historian dedicated to preserving the rich and often overlooked narratives of bisexual activism in Canada. From their journey into queer history during the pandemic to her doctoral research on bisexual support groups in smaller Ontario cities, Gabryelle's work reveals the powerful connection between bisexual history and queer history. Explore the unexpected joys of oral history and discover how tangible pieces of Toronto’s past have deepened her research.

Gender/Fucking: A conversation with Dr. Florence Ashley

August 14, 2024

by Chris Aino Pihlak

Academia / Collaboratory News / Queer Affect / Queer History / Trans History

Gender/Fucking: The Pleasures and Politics of Living in a Gendered Body is as bold and unclassifiable as its author. Blending poetry, erotica, personal reflections, and critical essays on transness, queer community, and the challenges of surviving under capitalism, this book is a must-read for anyone who lives in a body. Join Collaboratory friend Chris Aino Pihlak (she/her) as she sits down with the book’s author, Florence Ashley (they/them/that bitch), for a candid and far-reaching discussion on the book’s themes, and the experience of being a trans femme academic in 2024.

Queer & Disabled Activisms in Tkaronto Project: An interview with Creative Scholar Megan Ingram

April 5, 2024

by Alisha Stranges

Academia / Activist Histories / Archiving Oral History / Collaboratory News / Community-based Oral History / Disability / Oral History / Public Humanities / Queer History / Trans History

Welcoming Megan Ingram, our inaugural “Creative Scholar in Virtual Residence.” Part scholarship and part cultural production, Megan is developing a new documentary project, using oral history interviews conducted with community activists working at the intersections of disability, queerness, healthcare access, housing, and poverty.

Trans Misogyny in the Colonial Archive: An Interview with Jamey Jesperson

February 27, 2024

by Atticus Hawk

Academia / Activist Histories / The Gays Did What Now? / Trans History

For this edition of “The Gays Did What Now?” we’re hyping up the crowd for Jamey Jesperson’s March 5, 2024, guest lecture Trans Misogyny in the Colonial Archive: A Sex Worker’s Counter-History at the University of Toronto. This talk promises to transport you (yes, YOU) through three choice stories of intrigue, passion and protest from colonial Mexico City and fur traders in Oregon County to the salacious media campaign against Black brothel worker Mary Jones in antebellum New York.

Special Issue Release! Trans Histories by Trans Historians

October 20, 2023

by Jamey Jesperson and Chris Aino Pihlak

Academia / Oral History / Publishing / Trans History

Trans histories by trans historians are important. But with only a handful of trans history books and not a single academic journal dedicated to trans pasts, there are vast temporal, thematic, and geographical gaps in our histories. As two trans feminine graduate students in history at the University of Victoria, we set out to change that. In the summer of 2021, we took up editorship of our department’s peer-reviewed, graduate-student journal, The Graduate History Review, […]