All posts filed under: Trans History

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

October 24, 2024
by Alisha Stranges
Academia / Collaboratory News / Gay History / Lesbian History / Oral History / Queer History / Religion / Trans History

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.

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.

The Library is Open! (Let’s Keep It That Way)

January 31, 2024
by Atticus Hawk
Activist Histories / Drag / Gay History / Lesbian History / Queer History / The Gays Did What Now? / Trans History

The Library is Open! (Let’s Keep It That Way) Was your non-committal New Year's Resolution to “read more”? Did you join a queer book club and silently sob at the price of the newest gay paperbacks? Are your internal organs begging you to take up a hobby with a somewhat lower stroke risk? The Toronto Public Library’s dedicated Pride Collection at the Yorkville branch is full of luxuriously queer books, DVDs, CDs, audio books, movies, ebooks, magazines, comics, maps, classes, groups, kids’ rooms, study spaces, conference rooms and anything else your little gay heart desires.

Back, Back, Back Again! A Snapshot of Sapphic Aquatica, the New (New) Pussy Palace

November 14, 2023
by Atticus Hawk
Activist Histories / Kink Cultures / Lesbian History / Pussy Palace Project / Queer History / The Gays Did What Now? / Trans History

The Pussy Palace is back! Sort of. In November 2022, the club that hosted the Pussy Palace relaunched the pre-pandemic women and trans bathhouse night called, uh...Sapphic Aquatica? Held in the same historic bathhouse as the Pussy Palace, the pansexual swinger’s club, Oasis Aqualounge, ran another monthly women and trans bathhouse event from 2012-2019. Thought to be yet another permanent pandemic casualty, the party is back, back, back again in yet another form with the same fishy name.