Ohio Valley History, Vol 22, No. 1.
Collections Essay, Spring 2022
Without intentional cataloguing and description, finding evidence of enslaved people in the archives can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. The Bullitt Family Papers is a versatile, flexible collection that has been cited by scholars studying wet nursing, the Confederate army, Kentucky political and legal history, the history of colonial women as independent economic actors, and more. The Filson Historical Society’s goal to be more direct and intentional in naming and memorializing enslaved people follows a trend by archives to undertake such work.
Since May 2021, The Filson Historical Society’s Collections Assistant, Emma Johansen, and Digital Initiatives & Preservation Archivist, Danielle Spalenka, have been curating a digital collection and exhibit for the Bullitt Family Papers funded by the Kentucky Genealogical Society. This project was meant to lay the groundwork for our own institution, as well as others, to take care in how we interpret, exhibit, and document the histories of enslaved people. We have been called to evaluate ourselves as custodians and interpreters of the historical record and reckon with how our institution’s previous archival practices have reinforced white supremacy. Of course, these are only the first steps to solidifying community and stakeholder engagement. Many more actions are necessary to truly reconcile with The Filson’s role in upholding racist power structures, and one of the goals of this grant project was to plant the seeds for these systemic changes.
Y’all Means All: The Southern Queer Experience and Grassroots Archives as Places of Remembrance
The Cardinal Edge, Vol 1, No. 8.
September 2021
While the burgeoning field of queer history grows in academic prominence and scholarship, southern queer identities and histories are left in the gaps of this trailblazing research. As a segment of a larger senior honors thesis on gay press in Kentucky and the broader American South, this brief research report will specifically examine queer rurality, visibility, and space in the archive. This report also aims to highlight the political and sociological importance of remembering, studying, and teaching queer heritage, especially in the rural American South. This report argues that the complexities of southern queer histories are especially felt in the Women-In-Print Movement and in the methodologies of early queer historians in the mid-twentieth century, and that these waves of intellectual change should be included in narratives of national queer history. While many assume gay identities and southern identities to be mutually exclusive, the histories and peoples weaved throughout this research report prove that there is a vibrant culture that is both proudly southern and proudly queer in Kentucky and the American South.
Land Lines: Modes of Communication in Kentucky’s Queer Past and Present
Senior Honors Thesis, University of Louisville Department of History
Approved March 2021
As the queer historical discipline grows in reach, prominence, and scholarship, southern queer histories are on the tail end of this growing academic attention. Academic historians, digital humanists, and public historians alike have neglected Kentucky’s rich queer history in academic circles. This thesis aims to mend this gap in historic interpretation through research in Kentucky gay press, television, radio, and their effect on Kentucky’s queer organizing. Through extensive primary research in the Williams-Nichols archive, and secondary sources on the women in print movement, queer rurality, and gay media studies, this thesis measures the ways Kentucky queer communities have correlated with original gay newspapers, public access television stations, and radio shows in the mid to late twentieth century. This thesis is an expansion of the kentuckyqueerhistory.org project: a digital mapping initiative that began in the summer of 2018 and plotted over three hundred different sites of queer significance in Kentucky. While spatial humanities, digital humanities, and public history informed the initial stages of this research, we approach our sources with a new lens of queer southern studies and media studies. While the previous project plotted out the dots on the map, this thesis connects them through gay press and communications. At an intersection of queer history, southern studies, media history, and public history, this project argues the importance of interdisciplinary lenses in mapping and defining Kentucky’s queer past, present, and future.
