Closeted/Out in the Quadrangles: A History of LGBTQ Life at the University of Chicago
This new project builds on the Center's highly successful project, "On Equal Terms": Educating Women at the University of Chicago, which ran from 2004-09. By collecting oral histories and performing archival research, students and faculty involved with the project will focus on lives of members of the University of Chicago LGBTQ community from the early twentieth century through the present to create a history of LGBTQ life at UChicago.
This spring, project co-director Monica Mercado (History Department) is teaching "Queering the Quads," a seminar for undergraduate students to develop skills in oral history methods. Over the next year, student interns will expand on the skills they learned in the course and collect oral histories from alumni, faculty and staff. The project is also engaged with Special Collections at the Regenstein Library to research and to help facilitate building the archives on LGBTQ life at UChicago. Interviewees interested in contributing personal papers, archives, ephemera, digital files, etc. will have an opportunity to do so. The culmination of the project will be a public exhibition in the new exhibit space at Special Collections in Spring, 2014 and a publication.
Get involved!
- Volunteer for an interview
- Donate your materials to Special Collections
- Give to the Project (LGBTQ Oral History/Archive Project on the UChicago website)
To get involved with the project, please contact Gina Olson, Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at golson(at)uchicago.edu or 773.702.9936 or email us at lgbtqhistoryproject@lists.uchicago.edu.
For more information on the previous exhibit, please visit: http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/webexhibits/OnEqualTerms/