Past Events

Many of our recent educational forums, programs and events have been recorded on video and are available for viewing online. Scroll down for information on these programs and links to video recordings. 

Virtual Event | Archives for Educators

March 19, 2024

Speakers: Kelsi Evans, Isaac Fellman, Devin McGeehan Muchmore

In this virtual event, the staff of the GLBT Historical Society’s Dr. John P. De Cecco Archives & Special Collections discussed how educators can engage with LGBTQ archival material in their classrooms and curricula. The team discussed how educators can use our extensive collections, including digitized primary sources, in their classrooms, and provided guidance on resources available for K-12 educators looking to incorporate LGBTQ topics into their classes, including lesson plans, sample assignments, and source sets.

This is the second of two public events. This event series is supported by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library.

Virtual Event | Archives for Artists

October 24, 2023

Speakers: Kelsi Evans, Isaac Fellman, Devin McGeehan Muchmore

In this virtual event, the staff of the GLBT Historical Society’s Dr. John P. De Cecco Archives & Special Collections discussed how artists can search our extensive collections, including digitized photographs, activist newsletters, oral histories, paintings, drag, and other materials, for their projects. They also answered common questions about copyright, reproductions, and licensing. This event provided tools to incorporate historical material into creative work.

This is the first of two public events. The second event will focus on archives for educators. This event series is supported by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library.

Community Event | Into the Vault: A Behind-The Scenes Look at the Archives

May 13, 2022

Speakers: Kelsi Evans, Isaac Fellman, Megan Needels

You’ve seen highlights from our archival collections on social media and in programs. Now this program takes you on a behind-the-scenes look at the work of the GLBT Historical Society archivists. You’ll learn how archival staff preserve and share LGBTQ historical material, including processing collections, managing donations, digitizing records and more. You’ll get a peek into the vault, where the archivists will share some of their favorite pieces. Finally, we introduce a new workshop program we are launching this year that provides free archival skills training to the public. Speakers include Kelsi Evans, our director of archives and special collections; Isaac Fellman, reference archivist; and Megan Needels, project archivist. They are joined by members of our Archives Working Group, a volunteer advisory group consisting of local archivists, historians and others in related fields.

Mighty Reels | Shining Queer Blue Light on LGBTQ Life

March 4, 2022

Speaker: John Carr

Last year the GLBT Historical Society digitized a unique archival collection, the Daniel A. Smith and Queer Blue Light Videotapes, which consists of nearly 100 half-inch videotapes recorded by the Queer Blue Light (QBL) Collective. QBL was a grassroots guerilla project that documented the politics and culture of the local LGBTQ community in the 1970s. While the majority of the tapes document QBL activities, they also contain footage by QBL members of friends relaxing together and living everyday life. In this installment of our “Mighty Reels” program series, we screened some of our favorite tapes and spoke with John Carr, a longtime friend of Daniel Smith, who is featured in the footage as the host of a 1980 “Leap Day” dinner party. He discusses how viewing the footage was like “finding the Rosetta Stone” of his life in 1970s queer San Francisco.

Author Talk | Uncovering the Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement

February 25, 2022

Speakers: Wendy L. Rouse

The traditional narrative of women’s suffrage history sanitized the lives of lesbian and queer suffragists, leading to the erasure of the queer history of the movement. Yet, it was often queer suffragists who helped propel the movement forward, as they challenged the gender and sexual norms of their day. In this talk showcasing her newest book, Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement (NYU Press, 2021) historian Wendy Rouse shared the results of her efforts to recover the queer history of the fight for the vote.

Queeriosity Corner | Hidden Gems From the Society’s Vault

February 4, 2022

Speakers: Isaac Fellman, Megan Needels, Ramón Silvestre

GLBT Historical Society archives staff members presented a veritable treasure trove of hidden LGBTQ history gems from the archives vault. Curatorial specialist Ramón Silvestre, reference archivist Isaac Fellman and project archivist Megan Needels selected some of the most unusual and surprising material objects in the archives and discussed their historical significance. The program culminated with the unveiling of a recently acquired artifact from the Tool Box Bar, SoMa’s most influential leather bar of the early 1960s, that has never been seen by the public.

Author Talk | Brewing a Boycott: Where LGBTQ and Labor Activism Intersect

January 21, 2022

Speakers: Allyson Brantley, Miriam Frank

Historians Miriam Frank and Allyson Brantley discussed the long and interwoven history of LGBTQ and labor activism through the lens of Brantley’s new book, Brewing a Boycott: How a Grassroots Coalition Fought Coors and Remade American Consumer Activism (University of North Carolina Press, 2021). Drawing on oral histories and archival collections, including those held by the GLBT Historical Society, Brantley details how activists across the nation, from gay liberationists to Chicano activists and union members, built supportive, vibrant coalitions. Over decades of organizing and coalition-building from the 1950s to the 1990s, they molded the boycott into a powerful means of political protest, challenging the Coors Brewing Company’s antiunion, discriminatory, anti-LGBTQ practices and conservative political ties. This talk will examine the particular success of the boycott in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles and consider its impact in light of contemporary ongoing conversations about consumer power and corporate buyouts.