LGBTQ+ Digital Humanities

Since 2011 I have been conducting oral histories with people in the LGBTQ+ community. Much of this work has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for a project I direct called the LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory (2014-2019).

Family Camera Network (2016-2019)
This project involves collecting queer and trans family photographs, and oral histories about them, in partnership with the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives and the Royal Ontario Museum. This is part of a larger grant for which I am co-investigator and Thy Phu at Western University.

Community-Based Oral Histories (2017--)
From time to time I collect oral histories, or facilitate their collection, from important figures from within Toronto's LGBTQ+ communities. The oral histories are archived at the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives. Recent interviews include those with LeZlie Lee Kam.

Trans Health Care Activism (2016)
This video oral history project, conducted by postdoctoral fellow Nick Matte for the LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory, features video interviews with seven activists who protested the de-listing of gender confirming surgery from Ontario provincial health care in the late 1990s. Interviews are with Anna Travers, Rupert Raj, Nick Mulé, Susan Gapka part 1and part 2, Cheri DiNovo, Martine Stonehouse, and Greta Bauer.

Foolscap Gay Oral History Project (1981-2018)
This is an archival and preservation project concerning Foolscap, an oral history project where John Grube and Lionel Collier conducted oral history interviews between 1981 and 1989 with gay men in Toronto about pre-Stonewall gay life. The project produced over 100 life histories, describing (among other topics) the Stonewall Riots, Operation Soap, HIV/AIDS, psychiatry, policing, sex work, criminalization, intergenerational relationships, health and aging. The collection includes over 300 audio recordings from 125 interviews with 100 narrators; 51 of the interviews have transcripts. Working with students in the Collaboratory, we collected and digitized the tapes, written abstracts and metadata, and created a digital exhibition entitled "Mapping Foolscap: Gay Oral Histories1981-1987." We also conducted an oral history with Lionel Collier about the project.

The collaboratory has been covered in Oral History Association's Podcast, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and in the TSQ: The Transgender Quarterly. 

Transpartners Project (2011-2016)
This audio-based oral history project explores the experience of partners of trans men, focusing on partners who were with their partner before and during at least six months of the transition, however defined. I conducted 50 audio interviews from partners based in the US and Canada. For more about the project, see this XXXX.

Lesbians Making History (1980s-2015)

The LMH collective came together in the mid-1980s and was inspired by oral history projects of gay lives coming out of Buffalo, Boston and San Francisco. The collective interviewed 9 women about their experiences as ‘out’ lesbians in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. In 2014 I and a number of my graduate students began digitizing their audiotapes for a digital exhibition at the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives