Queer Desire in the Archives

This quarter I have been working with the Curator of Visual Material at the UW Special Collections. She pointed out an interesting topic when thinking about queer material in the archives. Do archivists consider queer desire pornographic? If so, how do they handle the material? Furthermore, what if they accept the material and digitize it, will the viewer find it offensive? Whats the best approach to prepare the viewer to see queer desire in the archives?

I have been thinking about this for some time and many things come to mind. My response to these questions are questions back to the archivists. How do you prepare viewers to see racism? How do you prepare them to see nudity of any variety in the archives? How does prepping the viewer change the learning outcome? If we prep the viewers before they see the archive holdings does it present the material as something that was or is offensive?  Does this perpetuate racism, sexism and homophobia?

I have seen several naked people (mostly women) in archives, racism runs rampant and I have certainly seen my fair share of homophobia. My conclusion is you don't have to prep them nor do
I don't think you can prepare someone to see the content in the archives. However, it is an interesting topic and has room for further investigation.

Other things I have noticed in the archives, there is queer history. The problem I face is how to search for it, how to offer a better understanding of queer in the archive, and how to allow independent curiosities to tease it out. To start to grapple with these ideas I did a series of searches in the finding aids of the Special Collections at UW. The following include the results.


Searching the word Gay is the most successful word

	Personal Papers/Corporate Records	(48)
	Visual Materials Collections	(11)
	University Archives/Faculty Papers	(8)

However, Lesbian found

	Personal Papers/Corporate Records	(21)
	Visual Materials Collections	(6)
	University Archives/Faculty Papers	(3)

Many of these Lesbian results are duplicates from the Gay query; however, it should also be noted that there is a Lesbian archive in Tacoma, Wa. This certainly changes the findings of Lesbian material at the UW special collections.

Furthermore, Homosexual found

	Personal Papers/Corporate Records	(9)
	University Archives/Faculty Papers	(1)

Transgender found

	Personal Papers/Corporate Records	(1)
	University Archives/Faculty Papers	(1)

Transvestite found
 Personal Papers/Corporate Records (1)
 Visual Materials Collections (1)

Queer found 

 Personal Papers/Corporate Records (5)

And Invert
 nothing.

This summer I hope to query queer in the archives and see what concrete themes I can find. I also hope to push this through to the web. Fingers crossed and schedules full I move forward.