Browse Exhibits (2 total)

Can a book’s front page hold some of the secrets of LGBTQ+ history?

For some, the front page of the book is home to the title page, author, and other basic details of the book. However, for others, the front page can be a space of creation. This exhibit aims to highlight how book dedications have operated as a space for LGBTQ+ expression. 

In this exhibition, book dedications are defined as hand-written notes from one individual to another. It involves exchange, often between two individuals. They are meant to last, as it shows a mark on who the book was and the purpose for the book being given. Someone writing their own name on the cover would not be considered a book dedication as it marks possession by one individual. Book dedications are special because it shows engagement from one individual to another.

Book dedications are considered a type of ephemera, or, as Merriam Webster defines, “something that does not have lasting existence.” However, this issue is complicated when dealing with LGBTQ+ history, which is what we hope you will explore throughout this exhibition.

Due to the nature of ephemera, it's often quite difficult, if not impossible, to locate who exactly the individuals who write these dedications are, as one of the artifacts is in this exhibit. Considering even further, these books were published 15+ years before the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States. One can only wonder about the history of LGBTQ+ individuals that wrote these dedications. 

Speculation over the individuals in the dedication is inherent, especially since the subject matter of the books is explicit in LGBTQ+ subject matter. As Gillian Russell describes, the “ephemeral both simultaneously resists and encourages inquiry, like queer, in ways that work around, within, and between the disciplines in which it figures.” In other words, the complicated inquiry of finding one’s queer identity matches the complicated inquiry necessary in studying ephemera. While these book dedications are only marked by the lifespan of the relationship between two individuals, it is simultaneously a permanent testament of who has owned the books. The contradictory nature of this history will be explored throughout this exhibition. 

It is with great luck that two of the three dedications explored in this exhibit are identifiable authors of the works in question. Even then, the implications of their book dedications in LGBTQ+ history have a contradictory quality. We are unable to know who the dedications are for, or the histories between the authors and their readers. As a mark of everyday writing, these writings were not meant to be seen by anyone other than the original owners. 

As Gemma Killen argues that “when queer people have not been able to find one another, they have sought refuge in historical materials and have attempted to connect to and politically empower each other through archival intimacy.” The desire to find history in these artifacts of everyday writing show how pervasive the desire is to see oneself. Everyday writing means everyday lives, something that often is in the imagination of LGBTQ+ individuals. After all, as Endenheim argues, “bureaucracy does not much care about ordinary people.” One can realize the importance of ordinary people through the use of everyday writing.

The exhibition is broken into three parts, all formed around some sort of question we encourage you to ask yourself as you read. The first, Who Am I? focuses on an unidentified pair of individuals in a book of radical feminism, which primarily focuses on lesbian feminism. The question aims to ask who this person is as well as why assumptions are made about this individual in terms of the book’s content. The second, Do I Know You? refers to the relationship implied between author and reader. While this book is not explicitly lesbian, the tone of the writing implies a far deeper history of the relationship between the reader and author. The last section, What Do We Do Next?, is simultaneously the most straightforward (in reference to explicitly lesbian subject matter/authorship) and most challenging. The dedication sees the importance of telling stories in print. However, what might they think of their own dedication to the future of the LGBTQ+ community? 

We invite you to explore in detail the nature of these artifacts. These dedications have a multitude of meanings, just as LGBTQ+ identity. As a museum dedicated to the process of everyday writing, we hope that you are able to use the power of imagination in the past existence of everyday LGBTQ+ individuals by asking yourself difficult questions. It might surprise you what answers you might conclude. 

Works Cited: Endenheim, Sara. “Lost and Never Found: The Queer Archive of Feelings and Its Historical Proprietary.” A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, vol. 24, no. 5, pp. 36-62.

Killen, Gemma. “Archiving the Other or Reading Online Photography as Queer Ephemera.” Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 32, no. 91, pp. 58-74. 

Merriam Webster. “Ephemera Definition.” Merriam Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ephemera.

Russell, Gillian. “Ephemeraphilia: A Queer History.” Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, vol. 23, no. 1, 2018, pp. 174-185.