Title: Professor of Women & Gender Studies & Sociology Awarded Drescher Leave Fellowship
Dr. Orr’s project draws on a variety of ethnographic methods, including interview, archival research, and participant observation, to explore the themes of queer intergenerational memory and intergenerational forms of nostalgia as they pertain to LGBTQ+ Archives generally, and more specifically to one archival organization, The Lesbian Herstory Archives. As a queer community archive, the Lesbian Herstory Archives (LHA) serves as a space for the coming together of lesbians and queer folks across generations. As such, it is a site for the radical sharing and shaping of queer cultural memory, history, and the future.
This project is especially relevant as the Lesbian Herstory Archives approaches its 50th anniversary. As a queer cultural institution, focus has been shifting from research in the archives using the archival holdings to research on the archives as a cultural, social, and historical space of great importance.
Congratulations to Dr. Orr on this achievement and on their important work in queer community archives and queer intergenerational memory.