Arizona Queer Archives
AQA Digital Repository
About
Established by Professor Jamie A. Lee, longstanding FAC member and Founder of the Arizona Queer Archives -- Arizona's first LGBTQ+ archives --, the LGBTQ+ Institute's Queer & Community Archiving Research Initiative critically examines theory, practice, and praxis in the work of queer and community archiving.
In 2008, Lee founded the Arizona Queer Archives as an oral history archives through which they trained a team of community oral historians with the support of an Alliance Fund Grant and fiscal sponsorship and equipment sharing through Pan Left Productions, a former membership-driven media collective whose mission was to 'amplify progressive stories and voices focused on social and environmental justice.' In 2011, the Arizona Queer Archives expanded to include the collection and preservation of physical materials. Early physical collections included the Made For Flight Kite Collection; Wingspan, Southern Arizona's LGBT Community Center's organizational collection; the Fly Away Zine Mobile Collection; as well as other zine, paper, clothing, A/V, and book collections. Today the Arizona Queer Archives lives in The Historic Y where its work is centered in community relationships and projects.
In their research on community archives as well as their own hands-on work to develop and grow a community archives, Lee notes that "community archives are integral to studying the power of the archives and the roles that communities play in representing themselves -- individually and collectively -- through bodies of knowledge" (Producing the Archival Body, 8). Lee's work with the body aims to reimaging how we might come to understand archives and memory through conceptual and material bodies as well as through embodied knowing. Through critical theory, Lee challenges the traditional archives and archival studies to encompass the archives that are not 'proper' and 'legitimate.' Lee urges for something bigger. Something playful. Something collaborative.
The Queer & Community Archiving Research Initiative is that thinking and doing space, in collaboration with students and researchers at the Critical Archives and Curation Collaborative, co/lab, where students, faculty, and community folks can come together around queer archiving and community archiving. The Queer & Community Archiving initiative includes collaborative archiving projects, hands-on archival projects through the Arizona Queer Archives, oral history and storytelling workshops, conferences, publications, outreach, curricular development, and international symposia.
Courses to consider:
LIS 641: Community-Centered Archives & Museums
LIS 542: Curating & Preserving Media Arts Collections
LIS 550: Information Environments from Non-Dominant Perspectives
LIS 557: Documenting Diverse Cultures
To learn more and to get involved, email Professor Jamie A. Lee.
P. Carl Eyeglasses Collection