Students learn queer history in San Francisco

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Furman students pose in front of a pride flag during a tour of the Castro district in San Francisco.

The instructors of the May Experience Queer Histories course wanted their students to have a tangible and personal connection to the subject. The obvious destination: San Francisco, California.

Guided by Tuğçe Kayaal, an assistant professor of history, and Nicholas Radel, a professor of English, the class explored many significant historical, literary and cultural moments in the metropolis long considered by many to be the capital of LGBTQIA+ communities.

During their two-week stay, the students learned more about Harvey Milk, the White Nights riots, the AIDS crisis, activism in the lesbian, Black, Asian American and indigenous communities, and other forces that shaped queer history far beyond the city limits.

“So many movements of sexually and differently gendered groups within the LGBTQIA+ acronym emerged in San Francisco and influenced the movement across the country,” said Radel. “The long list of ‘identifications’ in that acronym owes a good deal to San Francisco.”

Hands-on archival research

The students started their archival research at home before leaving for the trip, visiting the James B. Duke Library’s Special Collections and Archives, studying its collection of Queer Zines and other LGBTQIA+ literature and images, some dating to the 19th century.

“Furman did an amazing job bringing this material together,” Kayaal said. “In terms of the quality of content, we have a richer collection than many other institutions.”

Furman students study zines at the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center in the San Francisco Public Library.

Once in San Francisco, the students began their archival research at the GLBT Historical Society and the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center. The students were free to follow their curiosity and explore a wide array of topics, producing weekly reports on what they discovered.

The archives’ collections of personal writings, photographs and other ephemera made the “moments of change” in queer history immediate and personal to Caroline Brawley ’24, a politics and international affairs and Chinese studies double major who is minoring in women’s, gender and sexuality studies (WGSS).

“You can see how a drag performer’s costume was handmade, and how it had been so loved and so used,” Brawley said. “Or looking at papers of Asian American AIDS activists, you can see coffee marks and notes scribbled in the margins. These things belonged to people who were actively making change in their communities. It’s like you’re looking at the present and the past at the same time.”

‘So many topics to explore’

The archives led Dalmondeh Nayreau ’25, a public health and WGSS double major, to her final project, a zine about the Asian/Pacific AIDS Coalition. The organization formed in 1988 to address the epidemic in San Francisco’s Asian and Pacific Islander communities.

After two days of research that yielded a host of information on the AIDS crisis, “I thought, ‘I don’t know when I’m going to come back to San Francisco again, and there are so many other people and topics to explore,” Nayreau said. So, the third day was spent focusing on the Bay Area American Indian Two Spirits (BAAITS) archives, learning about the culture of the indigenous people who identify as having both a feminine and masculine spirit.

The MayX course also included dinner in San Francisco’s Chinatown and a tour of the Castro District. A day trip took the group to Muir Woods National Monument, Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. Some students also watched the San Francisco Giants beat the Miami Marlins 7-5 in Oracle Park.

Tourist must-sees aside, the group’s main takeaway was a deeper understanding of queer history.

“There are so many ways to tell the history of a city like San Francisco,” Kayaal said. “We tried to understand it through the perspective of the LGBTQIA+ communities who actually lived and existed there.”

“I think the students came to feel that connection viscerally,” said Radel, “and that was the great triumph of the course.”