History Commons^™

Kulaw, Jake, Nikki Farmer

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Jake Kulaw is a white transman born in Buffalo New York, who now lives in Portland Maine. His pronouns are he, him, his. Jake is a high school health teacher in Portland Maine, who is an activist and is involved in community engagement. He is passionate about teaching high school students on LGBTQ+ identities and safe sex. He talks first on his childhood and feeling like he was born in the wrong body. He had a lot of depression and turned to drugs and alcohol in high school and received substance abuse treatment in Albany New York. He talks on …

Griffith, Kirsten, Beth Gibson

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Kirsten Griffith is a thirty-six year old woman living in Portland Maine. In this interview, she discusses her life from her early childhood up to the present day. Kirsten is part of the LGBTQ community and identifies as a femme lesbian. She is active in Portland Maine’s LGBTQ community and works with Pride Portland, the Equality Community Center and Maine Trans-net. Kirsten is a full-time student at Mount Holyoke and is the primary caregiver of her younger brother. Kirsten discusses living in California, learning about her sexuality, and her involvement in community projects through this interview.

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Robinson, Richard, Jessica Toomey, Billale Fulli

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Richard Robinson is a sixty-seven-year-old gay man from Bangor, Maine. Rich knew from the moment he was born, he says, that he was gay. However, in order to avoid the consequences of coming out -- discrimination he could encounter from the Catholic church and the homophobic society at large -- Rich hid his sexuality for a large portion of his life. Rich was married to a woman for eighteen years. At the age of forty-one, he finally came out to his wife and to the rest of his family -- including his twin brother, John, who was also gay. After …

Sacerdoti-Ravenscroft, Sebastiane, Samantha Round, Kaitlynn Werner

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Sebastiane Sacerdoti-Ravenscroft is a non-binary lesbian, who uses they/them/theirs pronouns. They’re currently working on their Graduate degree in Psychology at the University of Southern Maine, as well as working at CIEE Maine, launching a podcast about mental health with their wife, and they are acting Chair of Pride Portland! During the interview, religion, mental health, activism, and family dynamics are discussed, as Sebastiane explains their life in Maine after living in many different places across the globe.

Citation

Please cite as: Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer+ Collection, Jean Byers Sampson …

Koen, Susan, Michelle Pelletier, Skyler Hebert

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Susan Koen in a lesbian women who has participated in many political and feminist movements throughout her lifetime. She was raised in New Orleans, but moved around a lot during her life, giving her a vast array of life experiences. She participated in the Anti-Nuclear Movement of the 70s and co-wrote a book called Ain't Nowhere We Can Run: A Handbook for Women on the Nuclear Mentality. In addition to this, she has studied and participated in a number of feminist collectives, including the Off Our Backs newspaper, the Women's Pentagon Action, and the Maine Won't Discriminate campaign. Koen wrote …

Drew, Lala, Erika Chadbourne, Kate Brezak

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

LaLa Drew is a Black, queer, Georgia born, Maine native. Drew was raised in Gray, Maine with their adoptive family. Drew is a writer, poet, activist, performer, artist, teacher, and inspirational catalyst for change. Much of Drew’s community engagement focuses on raising awareness about the black identity and embodiment. They teach an after-school program in Lewiston, Maine where they help students learn about climate change, capitalism, and racism. Drew is also known for their work as a writer. Their work has been published in Ms. Magazine, The Maine Sunday Telegram, The Deepwater Column, and the Portland Phoenix. They write about …

Lindsey, Ian-Meredythe, Zackary Caron

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Ian-Meredythe Lindsey moved around often during their childhood due to their parents being transferred for jobs. They lived in Oregon, Colorado, and finally Maine. Ian-Meredythe identifies as a non-binary transgender individual who considers themselves pansexual. Ian-Meredythe speaks in depth about their experiences with the erasure of themselves due to their gender identity and sexuality due to those not fitting within the gender-binary. Ian-Meredythe also focused on their experiences within the theatre, as they see very little room for non-binary individuals and storylines within the mainstream theatre productions. Ian-Meredythe focused on their involvement with Equality Maine, as well as their own …

Invisible Histories Project Comes To Mississippi, Joan Allison

Queer Mississippi (Complete Collection)

The University of Mississippi is now partnering with Invisible Histories Project to create [a] collection of Mississippi LGBTQ ephemera to be housed on the Ole Miss campus, and later, at additional repositories throughout the state.

Robedee, Matthew, Hannah Gorham, Jason White

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Matthew (Mat) Robedee is a 35-year-old gay man who lives in Portland, Maine. For seven years, he was a health and outreach worker and former prevention programs manager for the Frannie Peabody Center, in Portland. He has also worked with organizations such as Portland Pride and Equality Maine and is currently a real estate agent.

Mat grew up in Buxton, Maine. In elementary school, he revealed to a friend that he thought he was gay. His friend reprimanded him, telling him never to tell anyone about his secret. That event set the tone for years to come, and Mat hid …

Maxwell, Daralyn, Susam Cousins, Kelly Dyer

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Daralyn Maxwell, Dal for short, is a 67 year old transgender woman. Dal lives in Freeport Maine but has moved around the northeast throughout her life. In this interview Dal covers experiences she has had throughout her life. Dal came out as a trans woman later in her life and she values her experiences that brought her to where she is today. Dal covers her experience working in bars and restaurants as a male presenting person where she helped women escape domestic violence. Dal also covers her coming out story, from being outed to her boss, to coming out to …

Keppel, Bobbi, Megan Mcknight, Janine Rynkowski

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Bobbi Keppel is an 87-year old bisexual activist. Her father was a civil rights activist and union organizer; in part because of this, she felt she was a born “disruptor.” As a child, Bobbi Keppel was ill and struggled with being a “sickly kid.” She later married and had two children. During her marriage, she came out as bisexual with the support of her husband. She is a contributor to the classic anthology “By Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out” (edited by Loraine Hutchins and Lani Ka'ahumanu). For many decades, Keppel has been an educator on issues of bisexual …

Wilbur, Russell, Riley Kirk, Sam Penley

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Russell Wilbur grew up in Waterville Maine. At the age of fifteen he dropped out of school and began working at a chicken plant and shining shoes. Russell faced a lot of hard times with his family for his mother was mentally ill, physically and mentally abusive and his siblings were all very homophobic. With a difficult childhood and unsupportive family Russel began to drink to cover up the pain of his childhood. During this time Russell began to sell drugs which resulted in him going to prison for a year. In 1975 Russel became clean and sober and began …

Drew, Gia, David Kersey, Katie Prior

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Gia Drew is a 52-year old transwoman who serves as the director of Equality Maine: an organization in Portland, Maine that provides educational programs to support the LGBTQ+ Community of Maine. Her life experience has greatly prepared her for this role, and she shares that with us in this interview. Her story is vast as it spans over several topics (as indicated in the “keywords” section), several different states, and two very different regions of the country. Gia struggles with coming out as trans for her entire young adult life as she navigates bisexuality, hypermasculinity, social pressure in K-12 schools, …

“Blessed Within My Selves”: The Prophetic Visions Of Our Lorde, Flávia Santos De Araújo

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This essay discusses the intellectual and poetic work of Audre Lorde and its significance for contemporary global movements for liberation. My discussion considers Lorde’s theorizing of difference and power, as well as her poetic work, as prophetic interventions within the context of the 1960s to the early 1990s. I argue that Lorde’s intellectual and literary work is the result of a black woman’s embodied experiences within the intersections of many struggles—notably, the ones against racism, sexism, and homophobia. This strategic positionality becomes, as I discuss, the centrality of Lorde’s prophetic vision of collective and inclusive liberation: one that permeates past …

Review Of Darkness Now Visible: Patriarchy’S Resurgence And Feminist Resistance. By Carol Gilligan And David A. J. Richards. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 172p. $20.59., Bekeh Utietiang Ukelina

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

The authors argue in the book that Trump’s election shows the power and presence of patriarchy in American society and how gender can become the optics and hermeneutics of seeing things within a patriarchal framework.

Review Of The Economies Of Queer Inclusion: Transnational Organizing For Lgbti Rights In Uganda, By S.M. Rodriguez. Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Lexington Books, 2018, Katharina Wiedlack

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

The Economies of Queer Inclusion interrogates the politics of international LGBT activism and its effects on the kuchu (LGBTQIA) people in Kampala, Uganda. It deconstructs Western ideas about Uganda, using counter-storytelling from an anti-racist, decolonial, feminist and queer people of color perspective, merging historic discourse analysis, qualitative sociology and various ethnographic forms such as autoethnography.

Editorial: Media Activism, Sexual Expressions, And Agency In The Era Of #Metoo, Bekeh Utietiang Ukelina

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

The problem is that sexism, homophobia, and all forms of gender discrimination remain patently a problem in our society. Sometimes, these are echoed in language and most times in policies and practices that remain deeply unjust. The erroneous stereotypes about women ingrained in our polity and economic systems have often led to the exclusion of women from positions of leadership.

Sexual Real Estate: Repatriation, Reterritorialization, And The Digital Activism Of Nicole Amarteifio’S Web Series An African City, Tori Arthur

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

When Nicole Amarteifio, a Ghanaian born-United States raised repatriate to Ghana, uploaded the first episode of An African City to YouTube on March 2, 2014, she began a transnational televisual movement. The series, with two seasons completed and aired and a third season in the works, is a global powerhouse that not only shifts narratives about African mass media production and consumption, but also challenges limited notions of African life, especially for a new generation of the continent’s women. As the first of its kind on the African continent, the web series not only reconfigured the West African media landscape …

Seduction As Power? Searching For Empowerment And Emancipation In Sex Work, Jennifer Chisholm

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

A longstanding debate within feminism has been whether sex work is empowering or ultimately disempowering for those who engage in it. This essay seeks to contextualize discourses about seduction, prostitution, and sexual tourism as they relate to Brazil and to make a preliminary assessment as to the ways in which the act of seduction might be empowering for Brazil’s sex workers. Based on ethnographic research and borrowing from literary theory, tourism theory, and interdisciplinary theories of power and agency, I argue that seduction has the potential to be empowering for Brazilian prostitutes who can capitalize on the racial and ethnic …

The Trans Complaint: Contributions To The Disagreement About Desire, Brandon L. Aultman

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

Trans studies has been argued to be at a defining crossroads. The discipline needs to reorient itself toward new theories of transness and subjectivity or face its own dissolution. This means contesting received dogmas of gender-determination, identity, history, and narrative convention. This essay examines how recently proposed uses of narratives, poetry, and satire can enable such contests in generative ways. It theorizes the trans complaint as an index for how popularly and academically mediated trans cultures, or intimate publics, might turn toward ordinary life theories in order to understand desire, fantasy, and their interlocking complexities of making a life.

Women’S “Empowerment” In The Bangladesh Garment Industry Through Labor Organizing, Chaumtoli Huq

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

By critiquing empowerment in international development discourse and reconceptualizing it, the article shows how Bangladeshi garment workers have used the trade union space to achieve socio-economic empowerment despite barriers to labor organizing. Further, it argues for the development of working class women’s leadership.

Homosocial Desire In Tsitsi Dangarembga’S Everyone’S Child, P. Jane Splawn

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This paper explores the subtle explorations of homosocial desire in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s 1996 film Everyone’s Child. In her deft, though subtle, treatment of the social bonds among young males in the film, the filmmaker opens a space for queer readings. Societal inscriptions of gender and sexuality are also queried, as a teen engages in sex work to provide for herself and her orphaned siblings. While the film has been described as a film “about AIDS and orphans” (Lee, 2006, p.135), the paper proposes that Everyone’s Child is so much more than this. The paper considers the work of Sommerville (2000) …

Pamphlet Proofs: Invisible Histories Mississippi, Amy Mcdowell, Jessica Wilkerson

Queer Mississippi (Complete Collection)

Color page proofs for a tri-fold brochure to introduce the Invisible History Project: Mississippi to collect both oral histories and archival materials.

Tupelo Pride 2019 Exhibit, Amy Mcdowell, Jessica Wilkerson, Maddie Shappley, David Hooper Schultz

Queer Mississippi (Complete Collection)

The Invisible Histories Project-Mississippi launched during Tupelo Pride 2019's opening event at the Link Centre. IHP-MS had an information table with two pop-up exhibits: a selection of record covers from the collection of DJ Prince Charles (Charles Smith), now housed in the University of Mississippi Libraries Archives and Special Collections, and a selection of "ethno-poems", curated by graduate student oral history interviewers Maddie Shappley and Hooper Schultz.

Imperatrix, Domina, Rex: Conceptualizing The Female King In Twelfth-Century England, Coral Lumbley

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This article draws on methods from transgender theory, historicist literary studies, and visual analysis of medieval sealing practices to show that Empress Matilda of England was controversially styled as a female king during her career in the early to mid twelfth century. While the chronicle Gesta Stephani castigates Matilda’s failure to engage in sanctioned gendered behaviors as she waged civil war to claim her inherited throne, Matilda’s seal harnesses both masculine and feminine signifiers in order to proclaim herself both king and queen. While Matilda’s transgressive gender position was targeted by her detractors during her lifetime, the obstinately transgender object …

Queer Otherwise: Embodying A Queer Identity In Cape Town, Teak Emanuel Hodge

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This research responds to the following question: how do LGBTQ South Africans in Cape Town come to understand and embody their queerness? Drawing on ideas of the body as a sense making agent (Meyburgh 2006) and site of socio-political contestation (Foucault 1975) this research adapts body-mapping methodologies (de Jager, Tewson, Ludlow, Boydell 2016) to excavate the ways in which LGBT South Africans negotiate their queerness. Through centering the experiences of three LGBTQ identified South African’s in conversation with the experiences of the researcher, this paper delves into how queer people make sense of and understand themselves in relation to their …

Queer Spaces, Future Places: Conversations With 3 Black Capetonian Femmes On Embodying Liberation, Ivana Onubogu

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Black femme bodies face multi-axial oppressive forces resting on their racialization, gendering, sexuality and possible other factors like socioeconomic status and ability. I interviewed 3 queer-identified Black femmes between the ages of 18 and 35 that are based in or work out of the Cape Town area. Femmes is defined as trans womxn, nonbinary femmes, femme lesbians and femme bisexuals, effeminate mxn, or any other femme-identified queer person. The purpose of this project is to investigate the possibility of a liberated Black queer future as an embodied practice within the context of the Black Capetonian queer community. Participants were selected …

The Future Is Non-Binary: Investigating The Genesis Of The Non-Binary Movement In Amsterdam And Beyond, Sky Karp

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This project examines butch and crossdresser communities in Northern Europe in the late 20th century, and their transformation into the non-binary movement of the last ten years. This research investigates the recent trajectory of gender-diverse communities and evaluates the role of the non-binary moment in the history of gender-diverse people in the Western world. Findings come from interviews with Dutch individuals who identify as non-binary, genderqueer, or otherwise outside of the gender binary, as well as periodicals and other materials related to crossdresser and butch identities from the IHLIA LGBT Heritage Archives and the Atria Institute. This study demonstrates that …

Subversión Del Binario De Género: Descubriendo Las Violencias Ejercidas Sobre Las Personas Trans En Valparaíso, Marie Mendoza

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The key purpose of this investigative work is to identify the types of transphobic violences that are inflicted on Trans people in the specific case of Valparaiso, Chile. In an attempt to understand these violences, this project follows the experiences and understandings of these violence of two trans individuals who live in this city. Following a theoretical framework of gender performativity, and the way in which gender is constructed and repeatedly performed, outlined by Judith Butler, this investigation also analyzes how these violences are derived from the subversion of trans bodies to the gender binary and the cisnormativity of society. …

Khookha Mcqueer: Advocacy For Non-Binary Queerness And Lgbtqi+ Representation In Tunisia, Jake Gomez

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

In 2018, the Tunisian government arrested 127 Tunisians on the basis of suspicions regarding non-heterosexual and non-cisgendered acts. Tunisian civil society centralizes its core missions around advocating for the rights of LGBT individuals through attempts to target the measures that allow for such unlawful imprisonment: Articles 230 and 226 of the Tunisian Constitution. But within the undiscussed gaps between laws, cultures of homo and transphobia, and civil society lies alternative measures for non-linear forms of queer advocacy. This research engages with the work of Khookha McQueer -- a Tunisian LGBTQI+ rights activist -- and documents conversations had with Khookha regarding …