Elspeth Brown on digital collaboration in LGBTQ oral history

The Oral History Review

The Oral History Review, published by the Oral History Association, is the U.S. journal of record for the theory and practice of oral history. Its primary mission is to explore the nature and significance of oral history and advance understanding of the field among scholars, educators, practitioners, and the general public. Follow them on Twitter at @oralhistreview, like them on Facebook, add them to your circles on Google Plus, follow them on Tumblr, listen to them on Soundcloud, or follow their latest OUPblog posts via email or RSS to preview, learn, connect, discover, and study oral history.

By Elspeth Brown
June 26^th 2015

This week on the Oral History Review blog, we’re continuing our recognition of LGBTQ Pride month with a special podcast featuring Elspeth Brown. In the podcast, Brown discusses the LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory, as well as her work as a member of the community and a historian. Check out the links below for more information, and send us your proposals if you’d like to share your work with the OHR blog.

The LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory is a five-year digital history and oral history research collaboration that connects archives across Canada and the United States to produce a collaborative digital history hub for the research and study of gay, lesbian, queer, and trans* oral histories. The Collaboratory is the largest LGBTQ oral history project in North American history, connecting over 200 life stories with new methodologies in digital history, collaborative research, and archival practice. The Collaboratory is supported by a research grant from the Social Science & Humanities Research Council of Canada.

The project explores the histories of trans* people, queer women, gay men, and lesbians in the United States and Canada through the creation of a virtual research meeting place, the completion of four distinct oral history projects, a digital LGBTQ “oral history hub,” and a digital trans archival collections pathfinder.

The TransPartners Project is devoted to exploring (and historicizing) the experience of partners for trans* men. More specifically, it focuses on partners who were with their partner before and during at least six months of the transition, however defined (the couple does not have to be together now). The project also functions as a site to gather resources that might be of interest to partners of trans men, since there is currently so little information available for partners.

The Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives is the largest independent LGBTQ+ archives in the world. With a focus on Canadian content, the CLGA acquires, preserves and provides public access to information and archival materials in any medium. By collecting and caring for important historical records, personal papers, unpublished documents, publications, audio-visual material, works of art, photographs, posters, and other artifacts, the CLGA is a trusted guardian of LGBTQ+ histories now and for generations to come.

Image Credit: “Gay Pride Paris 2013” by Guitguit. CC BY NC-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

Elspeth Brown is a Professor of History at the University of Toronto, and the Director of the LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory. She is the author of The Corporate Eye: Photography and the Rationalization of American Commercial Culture, 1884-1929 , co-editor of Cultures of Commerce: Representation and American Business Culture, 1877-1960, and co-editor of Feeling Photography. She has also published work in Gender and History, the Journal of American History, Enterprise and Society, and afterimage.

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