for Queer DH on April 22

1. 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

2. Screenshot: Unghosting Apparitional Lesbian History

3. lesbian straight
then now
academic activist
insider outsider sister/outsider
racism sexism
black white
thinker doer
archival ephemeral

4. Screenshot Unghosting Apparitional Lesbian History

5. 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

6. “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

7. <relationGrp>
<relation name="spouse"
mutual="#jabuendia #uiguaran"/>
Following Laura Mandell, I ask can you queer TEI
Possible relationship values for the attribute "name"
include:
spouse
sibling
Parent
child
fiancé(é)
friend
lover
apprentice
adversary
colleague
coworker
masterservant
others you encounter (the possibilities are endless)Partner?
named unnamed

8. Screenshot Unghosting Apparitional Lesbian History

9. 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

10. Unghosting apparitional lesbian history

12. 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 ephemeral
Internet archive Heresies #4
Herstories Digital Archive
Independent Voices Digital Archive

13. Screenshot TimeMapper

14. 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

15. 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

16. public private

17. Permission
Copyright
Privacy
Print 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 private
As 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