Southern Lesbian-Feminist Activist Herstory Project, 2001-2025
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Summary
- Creator:
- Norman, Rose and Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture
- Abstract:
- Two hundred twenty-six digital oral history interviews documenting lesbian feminist activism and community in the South in the latter part of the 20th century.
- Extent:
- 36 Gigabytes (402 digital audiovisual files; 153 digital text files; 1472 digital image files; 1332 textual image files (PDF).)
0.3 Linear Feet (1 box) - Language:
- Materials in English.
- Collection ID:
- RL.10066
Background
- Scope and content:
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Two hundred twenty-six digital oral history interviews, documenting lesbian feminist activism and community in the South, focused on the latter half of the twentieth century. The interviews were created in 2001-2025, and are accompanied by digital notes and partial transcripts, as well as photographs shared by narrators. The series Interviews, 2001-2025, collects together interviews ranging over a wide number of topics and conducted by several different interviewers, while the series Interviews for The Pagoda: A Lesbian Community by the Sea, contains interviews conducted by Rose Norman over a 10-year period for her book on the Pagoda lesbian community in Florida, published in 2024 by Sinister Wisdom. Some interviews may contain only audio or only transcripts. A portion of the interviews have been tagged by SLFA Herstory Project staff with keywords; these are provided in the scope and content notes for those interviews. Where biographical summaries for interviewees have been created by the Project, these are likewise provided. The series Administrative materials contains records for the project, including release forms, correspondence, and project notes, and is restricted due to potentially sensitive information.
- Biographical / historical:
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The Southern Lesbian-Feminist Activist Herstory Project came into existence in 2009 around efforts at WomonWrites, an annual conference of lesbian writers, to document the lives and experiences of lesbian activists in the American South in the last decades of the 20th century. Many of the interviews were excerpted for use in special issues of Sinister Wisdom, a Multicultural Lesbian Literary and Art Journal. In 2015 the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke Unviversity became the archive for the Project, which continues to collect interviews and stories. More information about the project, its interviewers, and its interviewees, is available online. The Project website is linked here.
Rose Norman earned her Ph.D. in 1979, and taught at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. At UAH she cofounded and directed the business and technical writing program from 1986 to 2010, and cofounded and directed the women's studies program from 1996 to 1999. She retired from UAH in 2010, and with her colleagues in the Southern Lesbian-Feminist Activist Herstory Project collected hundreds of interviews over the following years. In January 2024, she published The Pagoda: A Lesbian Community by the Sea, using oral histories extensively to document the lesbian-feminist community and cultural center active in St. Augustine, Florida, from 1977 to 1999. - Acquisition information:
- The Southern Lesbian-Feminist Activist Herstory Project interviews were received by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library as a gift from 2013-2023.
- Processing information:
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Processed by Craig Breaden, August 2017, May 2019, May 2023, and November 2025. Processed by Tracy Jackson, January 2023. Accessions described in this collection guide: 2015-0200, 2021-0021, and 2023-0017, 2025-0111.
- Rules or conventions:
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Subjects
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Contents
Using These Materials
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Using These Materials
- Restrictions:
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Access note. Collection contains digital audiovisual materials that require special equipment. Contact Research Services with questions.
Access restricted. Some materials in the Administrative Materials series contain potentially sensitive information. Contact Research Services to request access. Request to use sensitive materials at the Rubenstein Library.
Access restricted. Administrative materials series contains project administration materials including private information relating to interviewees. Contact Research Services for more information.
- Terms of access:
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The copyright interests in this collection have not been transferred to Duke University. For more information, consult the copyright section of the Citations, Permissions and Copyright page of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
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- Please consult our up-to-date information for visitors page, as our services and guidelines periodically change.
- Preferred citation:
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[Identification of item], Southern Lesbian-Feminist Activist Herstory Project Oral Histories, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University.
- Permalink:
- https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/m16h22