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This article draws on oral history interviews with twenty-six lesbian and bisexual women who came out within the context of heterosexual marriages between the 1970s and the early 2000s. Despite the extent to which the LGBTQ community emphasizes narratives of progress and triumph, feelings of shame, guilt, regret, and ambivalence figured significantly in these women's life stories, particularly with regard to their experiences of coming out. This article thus considers how oral history can provide queer narrators with an opportunity to share negative feelings that often remain unspoken within mainstream LGBTQ culture and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay asks whether queer oral history is different in light of recent interventions in queer theory, LGBTQ history, and oral history. It explores the intellectual genealogy of queer oral history in the research projects of some of its early practitioners. It also provides a close reading of Alessandro Portelli's classic essay and considers its implications for a queer methodology, drawing from the work of recent scholarship in queer studies as well as our collaborative research in the Twin Cities Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Oral History Project. Finally, it gestures towards some of the unique dimensions of a queer methodology and its rich potential for research in LGBTQ oral history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ephemeral evidence, or ephemera (including posters, flyers, and other materials created for short-term purposes), poses numerous challenges to archivists and researchers seeking to understand their provenance, veracity, and significance. In particular, scholars of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer people and communities frequently encounter such materials since ephemera has become a central element of much queer archiving practice. Drawing on an ongoing research project examining the history of gay and lesbian college student organizing as an example, this article suggests how oral history can help “animate” ephemera, providing researchers a way to enhance the interpretive value of such fleeting evidence. Oral histories can transform “queer campus ephemera,” traces of 1970s queer student histories in the form of flyers, posters, and short-lived newsletters produced by gay and lesbian students, into more substantive evidence of the social and political climate in which such students lived, went to school, and organized. Through these examples, the article explores the benefits (and limitations) of using oral history to interpret ephemeral archival evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]