Please cite as: Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer+ Collection, Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine, University of Southern Maine Libraries.įor more information about the Querying the Past: Maine LGBTQ Oral History Project, please contact Dr. Streaming versions of the interviews are available on each page.
Files may have a longer than average download time due to their size, and will not play properly if they are not fully downloaded. Should you prefer Firefox, be sure that you have the most recent version installed. Technical note: Audio files in this collection will download most efficiently with the Chrome browser. This two-hour collective oral history interview focuses on the 1992 founding, and first year of operation, of the organization The Maine Gay Men’s Chorus, in Portland, Maine. This project was the subject of a six-week special series, Querying the Past Radio, on Portland community radio station, WMPG.įrom The Vaults: The Founding of the Maine Gay Men's Chorus Those interviews and stories are currently being edited into a documentary short film that will be available for screening in 2022. The film project also includes an evening of story-telling at USM about ‘dyke bars’ (held in conjunction with the 2018 installation art project by Macon Reed “Eulogy for the Dyke Bar” in the now-defunct Area Gallery). From 2017 to 2019, filmmaker Betsy Carson recorded short (5 minutes or less), interviews conducted by Wendy Chapkis with members of the LGBTQ+ community about the role (and disappearance) of gay bars.
The Querying the Past Project also includes a film dimension.
A series of radio programs (created by students Casey Georgi and Rachel Spigel) also make use of those oral histories the 6 part series was broadcast on WMPG radio in 2018 and is available to be downloaded on the Querying the Past digital commons page (see below for link). Dozens of history interviews are now available on the Querying the Past page on the USM Digital Commons. The LGBTQ+ Oral History Project integrates USM students into the process of community-based research after being trained, students serve as the primary interviewers and transcribers of the oral histories. Chapkis has many decades of experience using interviewing as a research method. The project is coordinated by the Faculty Scholar for the LGBTQ+ Collection, Wendy Chapkis, a Professor of Sociology and Women & Gender Studies at the University of Southern Maine. Through oral histories, the voices and stories of members of the Southern Maine LGBTQ community are preserved and made available to the public in an effort to enrich understanding of our community and to serve as an important resource for scholars working on LGBTQ history. The oral history project is intended to add an additional dimension to that collection. The Sampson Center collection includes important papers, photographs, and other artifacts representing four decades of LGBT activism, culture, and commerce in the Southern Maine region. The objective of this project is to collect oral history accounts of LGBT life, activism, commerce, and culture in Southern Maine and to make these accounts available through the University of Southern Maine’s Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity LGBTQ+ Collection Querying the Past: Maine LGBTQ Oral History Project – background information: