ARCHIVES
Archives are collections of historical documents that help to shine a light on historical happenings. In many cases, archives (and therefore how we tell history) focus on the mainstream. Discover several digital archives, provided by UCI Libraries, below that instead focus on the lives, groups, events, and news of the LGBTQ+ community.
What is it?
A collection of digitized primary sources documenting political, social and cultural movements throughout the twentieth century and into the present day.What's inside?
Seminal texts, letters, periodicals, speeches, interviews, and ephemera covering the political evolution of gay rights to memoirs, biographies, poetry, and works of fiction that illuminate the lives of lesbian, gay, transgender, and bisexual individuals and the community.
Blacklines was a monthly newspaper covering African American LGBT issues with a focus on gay media from around 1996 through 2006.
Marlon Riggs was a prolific filmmaker and gay rights activist - links to several short films of his are available here!
What Is it?
A robust collection of primary sources for the historical study of sex, sexuality, and gender.What's inside?
The collection is divided into many sub-collections from varying archival collections including the Lesbian Herstory Archives, International Gay & Lesbian Periodicals and Newsletters, Gay Activists Alliance (1970-1983), ACT UP: THe Aids Coalition to Unleash Power, among many others!
Womyn’s Words was a monthly periodical published by the Women’s Energy Bank, Inc. that began in 1983. Pat Ditto and other editors and contributors to this publication devoted their efforts to the St. Petersburg and Tampa Bay area in support of the local LGBTQ+ community. Although they primarily advocated for the empowerment and civil rights of women, they also spent a significant amount of time supporting political causes that would benefit the gay community as a whole.
What is it?
A digitized archives of 26 of the most influential LGBTQ serials.
What's inside?
It covers the time periods of 1954-2015 and includes the two arguably most important US and UK titles - The Advocate (the archive is available digitally for the first time here) and Gay Times. Other key titles include: The Pink Paper; Man and Society; and Transgender Tapestry.
On May 12, 1975, California Governor Jerry Brown signed the first bill anywhere in this country that change would change old "morality" laws to essentially decriminalize homosexual activity. This report in issue 165 of The Advocate discusses the events surrounding this historic occasion.
Of potential interest to film buffs: Also reported in this issue was filmmaker Diana Rabenold receiving a grant to help acquire rights to make a film version of a little-known lesbian novel Patience and Sarah (additional fact: the novel was the first recipient of the Stonewall Book Award).
What is it?
An open access (i.e., freely available) online collection of alternative press magazines and newspapers.
What's inside?
It includes scans of non-mainstream press newspapers that focus on news and events that are of more importance to minority groups. While it's not just focused on LGBTQ+ resources (e.g., it also includes materials written by the feminist and black press), it does include important titles like: DYKE, Philadelphia Gay News, and ONE.
While delving through Independent Voices, I ran into this fascinating article from a 1978 issue of Philadelphis Gay News. It attempts to provide an overview of gay theatre in the U.S. from 1900 to the (then) present. I'd certainly heard of several of the plays it discussed, like Lillian Hellman's Children's Hour and Matt Crowley's The Boys in the Band, but was introduced to several others that I look forward to reading.
Perhaps of more importance than the actual listing of playwrights and plays, is the dive into how these plays were received by critics and the public. Plays with gay themes that had unpleasant or negative outcomes for the gay characters were generally well-received, whereas the opposite was true for fully-formed or happy gay characters. Some might argue that this trend continued for many decades past 1978 and is still an occasional struggle with current queer art.
