Passionate about queer and trans history? The Collaboratory has two new UofT work study positions — a Social Media Manager and an Oral History Research Assistant — ready for students who want to turn their skills into action.
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.
An upcoming multi-media exhibition at the The ArQuives — Canada’s LGBTQ2+ archives — brings a new lens into the queer history of 20th century Canadian nightlife. Titled “ONSTAGE/OFFSTAGE,” the exhibition explores “the ways stage performance in nightclubs, cabarets, and drag venues offered opportunities for self-actualization for gender fluid, trans, and gender non-binary individuals in the second half of the 20th Century.” The curator, Jordan King, is a multi-disciplinary artist, performer, and writer who is currently […]
Daniel Laurin, a PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto, recently launched an exhibition that offers a glimpse into a rich visual archive of mid-twentieth-century erotic photography. Titled Beefcake, the exhibition features 45 black and white photographs, 17 periodicals, and three photo albums that have one thing in common: the celebration of the male body. Most of these materials date from the mid-twentieth century, they were produced in the United States, and they circulated widely […]
Having a good sense of the LGBTQ+ archives and resources available in North America has been crucial in my scholarship. My doctoral project on the history of gay periodicals led me to a number of these repositories, which included both physical and online spaces. Yet the increasing number of queer archives and the occasional changes...
In 2021, the Collaboratory conducted the Pussy Palace Oral History Project (PPOHP), preserving 36 interviews with patrons, organizers, and allies of the Pussy Palace — an exclusive sex party and bathhouse event for queer women and trans people in Toronto. Interviews address not only the infamous, September 2000 police raid, but also radical sex/gender cultures in turn of the 21st century Toronto. A desire to connect broader publics with this rich archive of oral testimony […]