Models for Telling Community-Based History
Thursday, December 5, 2024
5:00pm Pacific/6:00pm Mountain/7:00pm Central/8:00pm Eastern
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Join us for this review and discussion of two new projects portraying queer religious history in local communities—one in Boston and one in Washington, D.C. Heather R. White, Ph.D. will facilitate this discussion with Nicole Collins and the Queer Religion Boston exhibit along with Emma Cieslik and the Rainbow History Project’s LGBTQ+ Religion in the Capital exhibit. Collins and Cieslik will provide an inside look at the local queer religious history they have collected and how they have curated that into an online exhibition. White will lead discussion on what they have learned in their historical research that would be useful for historians or groups in other locales interested in portraying their history.
Heather White, Ph.D. is a specialist in American religious history with a research focus on sexuality, gender, and twentieth century social movements. Heather teaches courses in gender, feminist and queer studies; queer theory and queer politics; sexuality and the history of religion; and the history and politics of religious freedom. Heather’s first book, Reforming Sodom: Protestants and the Rise of Gay Rights was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2015. Heather also co-edited an anthology (with Gillian Frank and Bethany Moreton), titled Devotions and Desires: Histories of Religion and Sexuality in the Twentieth Century United States. Heather serves on the advisory board of the LGBTQ Religious Archives Network, and is a steering committee member of the Queer Studies in Religion group of the American Academy of Religion.
Emma Cieslik (she/her) is a lesbian, disabled, and neurodivergent public historian and museum worker based in the Washington, D.C. area. She also researches LGBTQ+ religious history in the nation’s capital, developing an exhibit for the Rainbow History Project and serving as public historian for the Pride Interfaith Service. She founded and currently directs Queer and Catholic, A CLGS Oral History Project, dedicated to recording LGBTQ+ individuals’ experiences within and surrounding Catholicism, capturing stories of religious trauma alongside stories of queer religious joy and liberation.
Nicole Collins is a Ph.D. student in Religious Studies at Brown University, where she studies transgender religiosity in the contemporary United States, specifically trans converts to Judaism. This summer she worked on developing Queer Religion Boston, a map and living database of the past and present of LGBTQ+ and religion in the greater Boston area. She received her B.A. from Carleton College and her M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School.
Tags
Archives/Library/History Activism | Catholic (Roman)