Co-taught by Emily Owens (History) and Leo Lovemore (University Library), this course uncovers queer pasts through hands-on engagement with collections held at the John Hay Library–Brown’s special collections library–and at other local libraries and archives and through visits with experts who curate queer collections and build queer histories. 

In this class, we ask:

• How do historians do their work in the field of Gay and Lesbian History? 
• What are their habits, what are their limits, and from which fields do they draw insight? 
• How do they imagine who their research subjects were, especially given that "gay and lesbian" are modern terms? 

Alongside these inquiries, we explore the nuts and bolts of acquiring, preserving, and curating the “raw ingredients” of such scholarship. We will ask:

• How do librarians, curators, and archivists decide what to include in collections?
• How do they go about finding, collecting, and processing those materials? 
• What ethical and logistical concerns do they navigate along the way? 

Together, these questions guide conversations about the relationship between the labor of archival research and the labor of archival collecting.