{"id":26244,"date":"2023-06-15T12:51:19","date_gmt":"2023-06-15T16:51:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=26244"},"modified":"2023-06-20T14:00:05","modified_gmt":"2023-06-20T18:00:05","slug":"may-experience-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/may-experience-san-francisco\/","title":{"rendered":"Students learn queer history in San Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Furman

Furman students pose in front of a pride flag during a tour of the Castro district in San Francisco.<\/p><\/div>\n

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

Guided by Tu\u011f\u00e7e Kayaal<\/a>, an assistant professor of history, and Nicholas Radel<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

During their two-week stay, the students learned more about Harvey Milk<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo many movements of sexually and differently gendered groups within the LGBTQIA+ acronym emerged in San Francisco and influenced the movement across the country,\u201d said Radel. \u201cThe long list of \u2018identifications\u2019 in that acronym owes a good deal to San Francisco.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hands-on archival research<\/h3>\n

The students started their archival research at home before leaving for the trip, visiting the James B. Duke Library\u2019s Special Collections<\/a> and Archives, studying its collection of Queer Zines<\/a> and other LGBTQIA+ literature and images, some dating to the 19th century.<\/p>\n

\u201cFurman did an amazing job bringing this material together,\u201d Kayaal said. \u201cIn terms of the quality of content, we have a richer collection than many other institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Students

Furman students study zines at the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center in the San Francisco Public Library.<\/p><\/div>\n

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

The archives\u2019 collections of personal writings, photographs and other ephemera made the \u201cmoments of change\u201d in queer history immediate and personal to Caroline Brawley \u201924, a politics and international affairs and Chinese studies double major who is minoring in women\u2019s, gender and sexuality studies (WGSS<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can see how a drag performer\u2019s costume was handmade, and how it had been so loved and so used,\u201d Brawley said. \u201cOr looking at papers of Asian American AIDS activists<\/a>, 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\u2019s like you\u2019re looking at the present and the past at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018So many topics to explore\u2019<\/h3>\n

The archives led Dalmondeh Nayreau \u201925, a public health and WGSS double major, to her final project, a zine about the Asian\/Pacific AIDS Coalition<\/a>. The organization formed in 1988 to address the epidemic in San Francisco\u2019s Asian and Pacific Islander communities.<\/p>\n

After two days of research that yielded a host of information on the AIDS crisis, \u201cI thought, \u2018I don\u2019t know when I\u2019m going to come back to San Francisco again, and there are so many other people and topics to explore,\u201d Nayreau said. So, the third day was spent focusing on the Bay Area American Indian Two Spirits (BAAITS<\/a>) archives, learning about the culture of the indigenous people who identify as having both a feminine and masculine spirit.<\/p>\n

The MayX course also included dinner in San Francisco\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Tourist must-sees aside, the group\u2019s main takeaway was a deeper understanding of queer history.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are so many ways to tell the history of a city like San Francisco,\u201d Kayaal said. \u201cWe tried to understand it through the perspective of the LGBTQIA+ communities who actually lived and existed there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the students came to feel that connection viscerally,\u201d said Radel, \u201cand that was the great triumph of the course.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The MayX Queer Histories course gave students the opportunity to explore unique archives of the people and movements that helped shape LGBTQIA+ communities worldwide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":26247,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,31,42,54,16,94,61,93],"tags":[1476],"class_list":["post-26244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diversity-equity-and-inclusion","category-english","category-history","category-may-experience","category-modern-languages-and-literature","category-public-health","category-the-furman-advantage","category-womens-gender-and-sexuality-studies","tag-pride"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}