Y’all Means All: The Southern Queer Experience and Grassroots Archives as Places of Remembrance

Abstract

While the burgeoning field of queer history grows in academic prominence and scholarship, southern queer identities and histories are left in the gaps of this trailblazing research. As a segment of a larger senior honors thesis on gay press in Kentucky and the broader American South, this brief research report will specifically examine queer rurality, visibility, and space in the archive. This report also aims to highlight the political and sociological importance of remembering, studying, and teaching queer heritage, especially in the rural American South. This report argues that the complexities of southern queer histories are especially felt in the Women-In-Print Movement and in the methodologies of early queer historians in the mid-twentieth century, and that these waves of intellectual change should be included in narratives of national queer history. While many assume gay identities and southern identities to be mutually exclusive, the histories and peoples weaved throughout this research report prove that there is a vibrant culture that is both proudly southern and proudly queer in Kentucky and the American South.