Then Not Now Queering digital history

a project-based approach

For Max Probst who taught me more about queer than any book ever did

michelle moravec @professmoravec

Screenshot: Unghosting Apparitional Lesbian History

lesbian straightthen now

academic activist

insider outsider sister/outsider

racism sexism

black white

thinker doer

archival ephemeral

Screenshot Unghosting Apparitional Lesbian History

the past is past (except when it isn’t)

“fear of a rapid and final disappearance combines with anxiety about the meaning of the present and uncertainty about the future” (Pierre Nora)

“an endless labor of differentiation” between a former period and the present.”( Michel de Certeau)

thoughts provoked byThe Gospel of Jesus’ Wife: An Open Letter to Historians

by Brice C Jones

“product” of queer technologies

Code can morph to endless choices of queer non-essentialism: from Boolean statements transferring to a multitude of states beyond and between true or false, loops fluctuating wildly and unpredictably, if / then logic dissolving into if / if / if / if ad infinitum

1 0

<relationGrp> <relation name="spouse" mutual="#jabuendia #uiguaran"/>

Following Laura Mandell, I ask can you queer TEI

Possible relationship values for the attribute "name" include:spousesiblingParentchildfiancé(é)friendloverapprenticeadversarycolleaguecoworkermasterservantothers you encounter (the possibilities are endless)Partner?

named unnamed

Screenshot Unghosting Apparitional Lesbian History

hegemonic discourse that privileges knowledge produced by the intellectual elite over against the kinds of knowledge produced outside of the academy. (Brice C Jones)

academic activist

The map shows that the majority of social and sexual institutions were either in or adjacent to the Gayborhood, … the Gayborhood was not the only queer space in the city …, suggesting the presence of satellite queer communities and neighborhoods outside of the confines of the gay ghetto Mapping Queer Philadelphia

Unghosting apparitional lesbian history

Why have we privileged this text over against all the other texts (Brice C Jones)

Juxta The Master’s Tools

Works in google books citing article, Jacqueline Hettel's method, visualized in Raw

queer history might be best articulated, to borrow José Esteban Muñoz’s concept of ‘ephemera’, ‘as trace, the remains, the things that are left, hanging in the air like a rumor’ (2009: 65).

because gay and lesbian cultures accrue around sexuality and intimacy, they ‘often leave ephemeral and unusual traces’ (Cvetkovich 2003: 8).Both from McBean 2013

archival ephemeralInternet archive Heresies #4

Herstories Digital Archive

Independent Voices Digital Archive

Screenshot TimeMapper

queer lesbian

”digital sites open up new ways to consider how the past is translated in and through the present. … the desire for queer history, the desire to see LGBT historical subjects.” Sam McBean

“advances in Internet technology and the possibility of digitalizing extant music, photographs and documents gave independent scholars the tools to preserve entire community herstories, complementing community-based digital archives… [question remains]how radical lesbian culture might best be articulated to future historians. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, a new generation of academic theorists shifted their lens from women’s history to queer studies, de-emphasizing overt identification with the L in LGBT.” Bonnie Morris

What’s interesting about the Archives—maybe a third or a quarter of the fliers I read don’t have a date on them. So you have no idea when they happened. And then a lot of things don’t say where, it’s just a phone number … And you’re sitting there screaming to no one but yourself, “Which Friday are you talking about?!” This is our history! Jen Jack Giesenking

past present graduate students enrolled in the Projects in Digital Archives courses taught by Anthony Cocciolo at Pratt Institute School of Information and Library Science In conjunction with theLesbian Herstory Archives, … have worked to digitize audio and visual recording from the 3,000 audio cassettes and VHS tapes in the Archives' collection.

LHA attempts to use the digital tools at its disposal to build context for archival materials. … how community-based archives … mobilize digital tools and media to build context and community. And I am also interested in theorizing what we in the academy can learn from such archives about building community, context and history, especially in the face of cultural erasure and amnesia. Madhu Narayan

public private

Permission CopyrightPrivacyPrint culture

Kelly Wooten, Research Services and Collection Development Librarian of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture in the Duke University Libraries.

public privateAs Spare Rib is still in copyright, in order for this project to go ahead it is crucial for the British Library that all Spare Rib contributors (including illustrators and photographers) grant permission for their material to be digitised and made available online for non-commercial use.

Polly Russell, British Library

Honoring a zine maker's request to remove her zine from one's collection can provoke ethical fisticuffs in a zine librarian/librarian zinester's heart. To whom is the feminist archivist of living authors' materials more responsible, the authors themselves or researchers from the future? And to distant researchers? … it is ultimately reasonable to have a creator-centric philosophy inform our decision-making. Jenna Freedman, Associate Director of Communications and Zine Librarian, Barnard College