Peacebuilding and the Arts

Freedom - Fear - Freedom: Art of Transformation in Times of War and Conflict / Artist Talk by Daria Pugachova
November 12
Waltham, Massachusetts, USA
Brandeis University’s Global Community Engagement Program presents a talk by Ukrainian interdisciplinary artist and peace activist Daria Pugachova. Her artistic approach prioritizes the presence of the artist and direct interaction with audiences in public spaces. Her work has been featured in exhibitions around the world, with her latest projects based on her experiences of war, exploring topics of freedom and limitation. Daria was one of five finalists for the 2024 INSPIRE Art Award of the Peace Research Institute Oslo  – selected from among artists from around the world who have responded to the lived experience of violent conflict and/or displacement in their art, in any and all media. 

Series of “Art in Conflict” Talks
 Center for Art and Peacebuilding, Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland
“CAP organises a monthly talk called ‘Art in Conflict’, which addresses fundamental questions faced by practitioners such as: ‘What are the specific qualities and possibilities of art in conflict areas?’ ‘How can multi-layered projects be realised?’ and ’Where is the limit of what is possible?’ These and other pressing questions should not only be discussed inside of the artasfoundation but should rather be opened up to a larger audience of interested people.”
Wednesday, November 13
Art in Conflict: Theatre Initiatives in Times of War with Mira Sack (ZHdK, Switzerland), Lena Saade Gebran (USEK's University, Lebanon) and Shebli Albau (theatre maker, Switzerland)
Wednesday, December 11
Art in Conflict: War, the Economy, and the Arts, with Robert Bachmann (Public Eye, Switzerland)
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Art in Conflict: ‘Conflict Engagement’ through Art, with Dana Caspersen (conflict analyst, dancer, USA)

Hearth Summit Bangalore
November 8-9
Bangalore, India
"The Hearth Summits are groundbreaking events inviting changemakers around the world to explore and embrace the wellbeing for welldoing movement. Building on the success of The Wellbeing Project's first-ever global summit in Bilbao, 2022, the Bangalore summit is one of fifteen regional Hearth Summits around the world in 2024... Hearth Summit Bangalore is hosted by Bangalore Creative Circus an urban living lab for regenerative systems, communities, and cultures."

Build Peace 2024 Conference
November 14-16
Manila, Philippines
“Welcome to Build Peace 2024, the 11th annual conference on emergent challenges to peace in a digital era, and peacebuilding innovations to address these challenges. The conference theme is a reflection of the importance of grassroots perspectives to frontier issues in peacebuilding and conflict in Asia.”

The Hidden Cost of Defending Books: Voices from the Front Lines Online Panel Discussion
November 18
Presented by The Eleanor Roosevlet Center and Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT)
“This thought-provoking panel discussion will delve into the emotional landscape of activism in the fight against book bans. The panel will examine the complex interplay of emotions that drive individuals to champion intellectual freedom, featuring a renowned author whose work has been challenged, a dedicated librarian on the frontlines of censorship, and a passionate student activist. From the frustration experienced when ideas are silenced, to the unwavering determination of those defending access to information, to the resilience required to face threats of violence and intimidation, this discussion will provide powerful insights from individuals on the front line of book banning.”

Cinema for Peace Annual Gala 2025
February 2025
Berlin, Germany
Hold the date, and stay tuned for details!
“The Cinema for Peace Gala is an annual gathering with the purpose of awarding international leaders, political activists, filmmakers, actors, artists, and celebrities for their contributions to fostering global unity and social change through the power of film.”

Revolutions of Hope: Resilience and Recovery in Ukraine Conference
March 6-8, 2025
University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA
“This international and interdisciplinary conference is dedicated to the ethics and politics of hope in contemporary Ukraine… [and is a] collaboration between Notre Dame’s Nanovic Institute and Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU).”

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OLDER ENTRIES

IMPACT: Creating Hope Together Virtual Series
Arts for Inclusive Democracy
June 25, 2.00 pm CET | 9.00 am EST | 10 pm JST

Join IMPACT (Transforming Conflict with Arts and Culture) for a thought-provoking virtual event delving into the complexities surrounding the rise of authoritarianism across the globe, using a systems theory approach. Against the backdrop of shifting political landscapes, IMPACT invites you to explore the trends fueling authoritarian tendencies in various parts of the world.
The discussions will lay the groundwork for understanding the multifaceted challenges confronting democracy worldwide.
While navigating this landscape, the conversation will pivot to a crucial question: How can artists and cultural workers serve as catalysts for inclusive democracies? Through intimate small-group conversations, the participants will brainstorm innovative strategies and partnerships to foster resilience in our communities.
Together, we will envision a future where creativity and collaboration intersect to amplify voices and fortify democratic values. Join IMPACT in shaping the agenda for future events, as we embark on a journey toward meaningful impact and lasting change.

Register online.

Production: The Secret Sharer
DNAWorks (Dialogue and Healing Through the Arts) presents the dance-theater piece The Secret Sharer , based on the novella by Joseph Conrad. “Considered an early Queer text, The Secret Sharer integrates dance/music/text/projections and will be performed in an open-concept space with audiences co-creating the environment and the narrative. In an extension of our community storycircle practice, audience members share their stories during the performance, interspersed at critical moments in the narrative. This devised work is an exploration of fragility, tenderness, and intimacy in times of personal danger and societal discrimination – the narrative of a silent, shared connection between two outsiders in the face of violence. In response to an increase in both hate crimes and LGBTQQ2SPIAA+ youth suicides worldwide, we are creating spaces for resiliency and healing.” The production will begin touring in August 2024. Click on “The Secret Sharer Info Pack” on the left side of the web page for more information.

Educational Program: Study the Intersection of Art and Africana Studies with the Crossroads Cohort at Tulane University 
Deadline: January 10, 2025
Applications are now open for the inaugural cohort of this new interdisciplinary graduate program based in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.
“The master’s-level program allows students to pursue graduate study at the intersection of Africana studies and art and is set to welcome its inaugural cohort in fall 2025. Mindful of the sense of isolation often experienced by students — especially Black students and other students of color — who work at the intersection of these fields during their graduate study, the two-year program is designed around a cohort model and will accept at least three students every other year. Alongside individualized courses of study, Crossroads Cohort students participate in dedicated seminar courses together and collaborate to develop a capstone project such as a small exhibition, symposium, or innovative public program as the culmination of their graduate experience. Crossroads offers tracks for both art historians and studio artists; students who complete the program can earn either an interdisciplinary MA in Africana Studies and Art History, an MA in Africana Studies and an MFA in Studio Art, or an MFA in Studio Art with a concentration in Africana Studies. All admitted students will receive a full tuition waiver, a graduate student living stipend, paid summer internship opportunities relevant to the field, funding for the capstone project, and access to additional research funds.”

Peace and Dialogue Initiative for U.S. University Campuses: Atidna International
“We at Atidna International fundamentally believe that Jews/Israelis and Arabs/Palestinians are one family, not inherent enemies, and we believe that such a humanizing notion can be revealed by creating joint and civil spaces for interaction between our two peoples. The name Atidna combines the Hebrew word ‘Atid’ for future with the Arabic suffix ‘na’ for our to hence mean “our future.” Atidna has been in existence since April 2022 and we seek to establish chapters at every campus across the nation! We host two basic types of events at Atidna chapters: dialogue sessions and peace events. Atidna dialogue sessions bring together both peoples to have free and open conversations about anything and everything pertaining to Israel and Palestine on campuses.” Find out about chapters at universities around the U.S., or about starting a new one.

Peace and Dialogue Initiative: Listening from the Heart
"The Parents Circle – Families Forum is a joint Israeli-Palestinian organization made up of more than 700 bereaved families. Their common bond is that they have lost a close family member to the conflict. But instead of choosing revenge, they have chosen a path of reconciliation. American Friends of the Parents Circle – Families Forum shares the human side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the American public in order to foster a peace and reconciliation process." Their newly-launched program with videos and a facilitator’s guide nurtures deep, compassionate listening – “connecting hearts across the Israeli Palestinian conflict.”
“Listening from the Heart is a transformative program offering communities a chance to engage in meaningful dialogue about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a human perspective. Through compelling videos of personal narratives from bereaved Israelis and Palestinians, and a comprehensive Facilitator’s Guide, Listening from the Heart fosters understanding, empathy, and reconciliation.”

Fellowship: Women Peacemakers Fellowship, Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice, University of San Diego
Applications for 2025-2026 open in March 2025
“Since 2002, the Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice (Kroc IPJ) at the University of San Diego’s Kroc School has hosted the Women PeaceMakers Fellowship program. The Fellowship offers a unique opportunity for peacebuilders who focus on issues of gender, peace and conflict to engage in a cycle of learning, practice, research and participation that strengthens peacebuilding partnerships. The Women PeaceMakers Fellowship facilitates impactful collaborations between peacebuilders from conflict-affected communities and international partner organizations. The Fellows also co-create research intended to shape the peacebuilding field and highlight good practices for peacebuilding design and implementation.”

Book: The Guantánamo Artwork and Testimony of Moath Al-Alwi: Deaf Walls Speak
Edited by Alexandra S. Moore and Elizabeth Swanson, 2024; Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Human Rights
“Deaf Walls Speak presents an insider’s view of artmaking in Guantánamo, the world’s most notorious prison, as self-expression and protest, and to stage a fundamental human rights claim that has been denied by law and politics: the right to be recognized as human. The book juxtaposes detainee artist Moath al-Alwi’s testimony and artwork with essays that situate his work within legal, political, aesthetic, and material contexts to demonstrate that artwork at Guantánamo constitutes important forms of material witnessing to human rights abuses perpetrated and denied by the U.S. government.”

Book: The Pocket Guide for Facing Down a Civil War: Surprising ideas from everyday people who shifted the cycles of violence
By John Paul Lederach
“In this Pocket Guide, internationally renowned peace practitioner John Paul Lederach reflects on his experience across over four decades mediating and transforming conflicts in places including Northern Ireland, Colombia, Nepal, Somalia, South Sudan, Nicaragua, and Tajikistan, among many others. His experiences grant him a unique perspective not only on what precipitates, propels, and sustains violent conflict, but also into key understandings and approaches that help shift dynamics of harm toward practices of social healing.”

Film: The Medallion
“Telling the Story of Ethiopia’s Red Terror Through a Family Artifact”
“In Ruth Hunduma’s short documentary ‘The Medallion,’ a mother’s memories serve as a window to a history of genocide and survival.”

Film: Climate Artists: Maya Lin
“Renowned for her large-scale environmental artworks and memorial designs, Maya Lin's work explores the relationship between humans and the landscape. Her projects focus on environmental awareness and sustainability.”

Film Series: Shifting Landscapes
Emergence Magazine
Shifting Landscapes is a documentary series of four films, “exploring the power of art and story to orient us amid the darkness of our time. Following a musician, a poet, a writer, and a filmmaker who are each embracing the alchemical power of story to connect and transform us, this series opens ways of being that hold both catastrophe and love as our landscapes change and disappear.”

Podcast: Ukraine’s Death-Defying Art Rescuers
By Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian, July 2024
“When Putin invaded, a historian in Kyiv saw that Ukraine’s cultural heritage was in danger. So he set out to save as much of it as he could. “

Blog Post: Learning About Fascism From Novels
 Scott Nakagawa, The Anti-Authoritarian Playbook, Oct 2024
“[H]ere is a list of some of the best … novels for learning about authoritarianism and fascism. Each offers a powerful critique of oppressive regimes and the psychological, social, and political dynamics they create.”

Webinar Recording: “Climate Museums – Telling the Story of Climate Change Through Art and Science”
Brandeis University, Center for German and European Studies, October 2024
Listen to a dynamic conversation with two experts who have created "pop-up" climate museums in The Netherlands and the US. They share how they’ve been developing new ways to communicate about the climate crisis on both sides of the Atlantic.

Article: “Museums Use the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication’s Insights to Guide their Climate Exhibits and Programs”
by Millika Talwar, Stephanie Ratcliffe, Joshua Low, and Jennifer Maron
Informal Learning Review Summer 2024 (pages 26-29)
“The climate crisis is putting virtually everything and everyone we know and love at risk. Museums hold remarkable power as cultural institutions and can use their unique position to educate diverse visitors about the climate crisis and inspire climate action.”

Article: “New Science, New Perspectives: LGBTQ+ Inclusion in Science Museums”
by Jen Tuttle Parsons
Informal Learning Review Summer 2024 (pages 14-17)
“Science centers and museums are increasingly focused on addressing diversity, equity, access, and inclusion of marginalized communities. These groups and individuals are underrepresented in STEM learning environments due to colonialism, racism, sexism, and the heteronormativity of dominant cultures.”

List and Links: Museums of Climate Change Network
Read about the Jockey Museum of Climate Change in Hong Kong, the Museum of Tomorrow in Rio de Janiero, the Climate Museum in New York, the Klimahaus Bremerhaven 8° Ost in Bremerhaven, Germany, and the University of Oslo’s Klimahuset.

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OLDER ENTRIES

Book: The Cultural Dimensions of Peacebuilding
By Marty Branagan
“The Cultural Dimensions of Peacebuilding details aspects of cultures, including language, films, journalism, political economics, museums, education, parenting, gender, artistic activism, and spirituality, which can contribute to either more violent societies or more peaceful ones. Solutions-oriented, it aims to inspire deep understanding and reflection, empowerment, and grassroots action in cultural spheres.”

Book: Borders to Bridges: Arts-Based Curriculum for Social Justice
By Janice Frame
“Borders to Bridges is designed to promote dialogue in schools and communities by engendering deeper understanding and discussion to counter the myths, bullying, and fears that negatively affect our learning institutions. The Guidebook contains practical lesson plans, narratives, poetry, mixed media artwork and resources for K-12 educators, and after-school, refugee, counseling, prison, adult, university, and teacher training education programs. Borders to Bridges enriches learning and engages students with issues that touch their lives and communities. Contributors include world-renowned educators, poets, artists, and writers from 38 countries and 20 states of the U.S.”
Check out:

• Related Resources mentioned in each lesson of Borders to Bridges
• A 6-minute video of the How-To Experiential Learning workshop that shares ways to use the book

Documentary film: Safe Haven
By Lisa Molomot
“The film weaves together stories of U.S. war resisters who sought refuge in Canada during the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. The film shows how Vietnam era resisters participated in a movement to support the younger generation of U.S. soldiers and exposes myths and realities of Canada as a safe haven.”

Read what professors are saying about the film and learn more about streaming rights OR on Kanopy.

New cultural space: artsasfoundation opens art space in Yerevan
“In response to the mass exodus of over 100,000 Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians to Armenia due to the Azerbaijani military offensive last September, we are opening an art space in Yerevan. The Living Room is a connecting space for displaced communities from Nagorno-Karabakh where Armenian and international artists will be working together in varied social and artistic forms. Through art we want to encourage those who have lost their homes to resist a permanent self-identification as victims. The aim of the Living Room is to enable and promote encounters between artists and local communities engaging with creative and grass-rooted, conflict-sensitive approaches and imagining a peaceful future. We offer a space for various uses where people can experience their own creative power, for example, through family celebrations, movie nights, community events, workshops for children and adolescents, and interactive art activities with community involvement. With the help of our donors, we were able to find a suitable space, a two-room apartment on the ground floor in a peripheral district of Yerevan where many refugees are housed. By mid-June 2024, the space will be fully furnished, and activities can begin.”

Art and Social Transformation Lab /artsasfoundation
Deadline: June 30
"For its first international activity in the Living Room, artasfoundation invites artists, art educators, researchers, and cultural practitioners in an Open Call to join a seven-day laboratory on art and social transformation. The laboratory is designed as a learning and experimenting space for 12 participants to create artistic practices engaging with communities, encouraging them to take control of their lives and deal with past, present and future struggles through creative methods.
Apply online.
Lab time: August 6-12, 2024
Location: The Living Room – Arshakunyats 26, 0023, Yerevan, Armenia
Application Deadline: June 30, 23.59 CET"

Read on to discover books in which creative writers evoke complex, sometimes harrowing circumstances, and the nuance, fear, and courage behind the choices that people make when their lives, loved ones, communities, indeed their worlds and aspects of their identity and dignity, are at risk.

The Book Censor’s Library 
by Bothayna Al-Essa (2024), translated from Arabic
“The new book censor hasn’t slept soundly in weeks. By day, he combs through manuscripts at a government office, looking for anything that would make a book unfit to publish—allusions to queerness, unapproved religions, any mention of life before the Revolution. By night, pilfered novels pile up in the house he shares with his wife and daughter, and the characters of literary classics crowd his dreams. As the siren song of forbidden reading continues to beckon, he descends into a netherworld of resistance fighters, undercover booksellers, and outlaw librarians trying to save their history and culture. Reckoning with the global threat to free speech and the bleak future it all but guarantees, Bothayna Al-Essa marries the steely dystopia of Orwell’s 1984 with the madcap absurdity of Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, resulting in a dreadful twist worthy of Kafka. The Book Censor’s Library is a warning call and a love letter to stories and the delicious act of losing oneself in them.”

Off the Books 
by Soma Mei Sheng Frazier (2024)
“Mĕi Brown is a recent Dartmouth [University] dropout working as a private chauffeur with a dodgy roster of clients—one of whom hires her to drive all the way across the country…
[This one particular client’s] insistence on unusually frequent breaks leads Mĕi to confront him about his precious luggage, and once his secret is revealed she begins to see the world in a very different light. Frazier expertly weaves historic and contemporary injustices faced by Chinese Americans and Uyghurs through this fast-paced, propulsive book, which is at its most powerful when depicting the way Mĕi’s family navigates life after catastrophe… A vital, enthralling debut in which devastating social commentary is delivered with a wink.”

The Backstreets: A Novel from Xinjiang
by Perhat Tursun (2022), translated from Uyghur
“The Backstreets is an astonishing novel by a preeminent contemporary Uyghur author who was disappeared by the Chinese state... [It] is a stark fable about urban isolation and social violence, dehumanization and the racialization of ethnicity. Yet its protagonist’s vivid recollections of maternal tenderness and first love reveal how memory and imagination offer profound forms of resilience. A translator’s introduction situates the novel in the political atmosphere that led to the disappearance of both the author and his work… Perhat Tursun [the author] is a leading Uyghur writer, poet, and social critic from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. He has published many short stories and poems as well as three novels... In 2018, he was detained by the Chinese authorities and was reportedly given a sixteen-year prison sentence.”

Bad Girls
by Camila Sosa Villada (2022), translated from Spanish
“The novel… is a first-person coming-of-age story told by Camila, who is born poor and a boy in a town in the hills of Cordoba Province [Argentina], and whose parents violently reject her when, as a teenager, she starts dressing as a girl. At the age of eighteen, she moves to the city to attend [university]… where, by night, to support herself, she becomes a sex worker. Her story unfolds as she finds a group of more experienced travestis… who teach and protect her, and with whom she shares daily doses of cruelty, pain, and humiliation but also of solidarity and joy.”

Against the Loveless World
by Susan Abulhawa (2019)
“As Nahr sits, locked away in solitary confinement, she spends her days reflecting on the dramatic events that landed her in prison in a country she barely knows. Born in Kuwait in the seventies to Palestinian refugees, she dreamed of falling in love with the perfect man, raising children, and possibly opening her own beauty salon. Instead, the man she thinks she loves jilts her after a brief marriage, her family teeters on the brink of poverty, she’s forced to prostitute herself, and the US invasion of Iraq makes her a refugee, as her parents had been. After trekking through another temporary home in Jordan, she lands in Palestine, where she finally makes a home, falls in love, and her destiny unfolds under Israeli occupation. [It is a book of] subversive humor and moral ambiguity…”

Edo’s Souls
by Stella Gaitano (2019), translated from Arabic
“When a young Lucy-Eghino, who is coming of age in a 1970s village in southern Sudan, is beset by rumours of approaching violence, she has no choice but to flee - first to Juba, then northwards to Khartoum. Marco, a gentle young father, wages a daily battle to keep his family together while avoiding friction with any northerners. Peter, a soldier unsure of where his loyalties lie, is forced to carry out night raids searching for bands of rebels.”

The White Girl 
by Tony Birch (2019)
“The White Girl is a black and white story about Australian colonialism’s malevolent legacies, and the courage, strength and dignity of Indigenous resistance. It’s a story about strong women, with whom Birch’s life has been blessed. It is also a profound allegory of good and evil, and a deep exploration of human interaction, black and white, alternately beautiful and tender, cruel and unsettling.”

Radiance of Tomorrow 
by Ishmael Beah (2015)
“… Imperi, as glimpsed in the book’s opening pages, appears as a desiccated wasteland, a collection of charred houses and strewn bones, the site of an abrupt massacre seven years earlier when rebels attacked the village without warning. Such atrocities were commonplace across Sierra Leone during its notoriously brutal civil war, which stretched from 1991 to 2002, causing some 70,000 deaths and separating more than two million people from their homes.
Radiance of Tomorrow is not a story of exodus, though, but rather a rare look at the phenomena of homecoming and reclamation, written with the moral urgency of a parable and the searing precision of a firsthand account.”

Nothing’s Mat
by Erna Brodber (2014)
“Nothing’s Mat is told by a black British teenager – ‘every black girl’ – for she has no name until the very last chapters when she is teasingly called ‘Princess’ by her husband. Somewhere in the 1950s, London-based Princess is allowed to complete her sixth-form final exams by writing a long paper on [her] West Indian family instead of sitting an exam. She thinks this a godsend and that all she has to do is to interview her parents. Her father tries to help her with his side but they both find that their kin will not fit into the standard anthropological template… In Jamaica, much as her middle-class black Jamaican grandparents and her parents in England might not have liked it, Princess meets and spends time with her obscure cousin Nothing, called Conut. Conut introduces Princess to a plant that obeys certain divine principles and is available to humans to make artefacts for their comfort. Accordingly, they begin to make a mat and as they twist straw and bend it into intricate shapes, Conut tells her the family history so that their creation becomes for her a mat of anthropological template… This work is at once a fictional family history and a comment on anthropological methodology and African systems of thought.”

Pride Month celebrates and honors LGBTQIA+ communities across the globe, as well as their history, accomplishments, and ongoing struggles for justice and equality. LGBTQIA+ people and allies alike continue to advocate for rights – often creatively – and to amplify their voices as LGBTQIA+ individuals are facing renewed or increased attacks on their visibility and safety, and on the right to be who they are. One way to counter this is by supporting - and voting for - leaders who advocate for queer and trans people. Please check out the articles and short documentaries we’ve listed below in recognition of Pride Month. We start with pieces that shine a light on specific situations of precarity or danger, and move on to essays and films that highlight creative contributions to initiatives that thwart repression and erasure. 

 

Gay rights activists call for more international pressure on Uganda over anti-LGBTQ law
By Risdel Kasasira/Associated Press, PBS News
“Ugandan gay rights activists asked the international community to mount more pressure on the government of Uganda to repeal an anti-gay law which the country’s Constitutional Court refused to nullify” in April of this year.

 

Mapping Attacks on LGBTQ Rights in U.S. State Legislatures in 2024
By the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
“Choose a state on the map to show the different bills targeting LGBTQ rights and taks action. While not all of these bills will become law, they all cause harm for LGBTQ people.”

 

 Pride Calendar
“The LGBTQ+ rights movement has made tremendous strides over the past few decades and much of the progress in visibility is thanks in part to gay pride parades and marches that have taken place in cities around the world.”

 

Helping LGBTQ+ People in Latin America Achieve Their Dreams
The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) “works with LGBTQ+ refugees and members of the local community in Latin America and the Caribbean... [They] work with grassroots and community-based organizations to provide mental health support, gender-based violence prevention services, legal assistance and economic inclusion programs.”

 

Queer Dramaturgies in Turkish Theatre
Kunafa and Shay (podcast)
“In our third season, we highlight queer MENA and SWANA or Southwest Asian North African theatremakers and dive into the breadth of queerness present in their art.”

 

Balancing Trauma and Joy While Teaching Queer Theatre History
By John Michael Diresta/HowlRound Theatre Commons
“As a white gay man in my early forties, I do not know what it is to walk through life as a lesbian, or a trans person, a nonbinary person, or a person of color. Many of my students fall into those categories, and I don’t claim to have answers for them as to how to process their lived experiences. I am also something many of my students are not—a queer person who risked losing everything when he came out and who put himself at risk of HIV conversion with every sexual encounter before the advent of PREP. I am glad that so many of my students now come out into the open arms that I did not find and can live lives less fettered by sexual anxiety. But I am afraid that these strides have stolen from my students the opportunity to connect with the long history of queer liberators that came before us.”

 

The Guardian has produced a series of relevant short documentaries:

SAINTMAKING (The canonization of Derek Jarman by queer “nuns” in the UK)
2021 was the “30th anniversary of film-maker Derek Jarman’s canonisation by an activist group of gay male ‘nuns’ known as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. At the time, in 1991, Derek Jarman was the most prominent person in the UK living openly with HIV. He was outspoken, radical and unapologetically queer.”

BEIRUT Dreams in Color (The queer revolution in the Middle East)
“Mashrou’ Leila were one of the biggest bands in the Middle East, with a lead singer, Hamed, who is the most prominent openly gay rock star in the Arab world. Known globally, their gigs were regular sell-out successes until an event at their 2017 Cairo concert changed everything.”

OLD LESBIANS (An oral ‘herstory’ archive project in the United States)
“From the first crush to first love, from the closet to coming out and from loss to connection. For the last 25 years, retired schoolteacher Arden Eversmeyer travelled from Houston across the US to record hundreds of oral ‘herstories’ from a rapidly disappearing population. Old Lesbians honours Arden’s legacy by animating the resilient, joyful voices she preserved in the Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project.”