Over the past decade, curators, archivists, and librarians at the Brown University Library and the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women have been actively collecting, preserving, and making available special collections that shine a light on the complex experiences of transgender and gender diverse people and communities across the world.
In the spirit of community, connection, and creative collaboration, we invite you to join us Wednesday, April 9, 2025 from 4 to 6 p.m. for a Trans Archive Salon on the third floor of the John Hay Library.
We’ll gather together to
- explore highlights from these collections hands-on,
- hear from a panel of archivists, community organizers, and researchers about their current work and future visions for trans and gender-diverse archival collections, and
- build communities of solidarity and support for exploring, researching, creating, and sustaining these crucially important collections.
The event will be followed by a reception, where we will collectively celebrate the cultivation of trans joy and resistance in the archives and the magic of community memory and storytelling as necessary tools for the times ahead. Refreshments will be served!
This hybrid event is open to current Brown ID holders in person. Attendance on Zoom is open to all. Registration is required.
Sponsored by the Brown University Library, the John Nicholas Brown Center, the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, and the LGBTQ Center.
Participants
The panel discussion will be moderated by Janaya Kizzie, Processing Archivist at the John Hay Library.
Panelists
Justice Gaines
Justice Gaines is a facilitator, poet, and political educator based in Providence, RI. Xe currently serves as the Political Education Coordinator at SISTA Fire, building with women and nonbinary people of color towards social and economic transformation. Xe is a board member of Freedom to Thrive, advocating for the abolition of police, prisons, and crimmigration systems. Xyr spoken word and poetry dissects and subverts the mythologies that uphold the U.S. empire. Xyr work can be found in Split This Rock’s The Quarry database, POETRY magazine, The Nation, and various other publications.
Jo Ouyang ’26
Jo Ouyang (he/they) is a queer transmasc Chinese/American organizer, student, and amateur archivist from Duluth, GA. They currently attend Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design where they study Ethnic Studies and Painting. Their Ethnic Studies thesis and art practice archive the oral histories from 20 Asian/American community organizers in Atlanta and the surrounding immigrant ethnoburbs. Through film photography, maps, and zines, Jo theorizes about an abolitionist Southern/Asian/American politic and the radical possibilities within the Black Lives Matter, Stop Asian Hate, Stop Cop City, and Free Palestine movements in Atlanta.
K.J. Rawson
K.J. Rawson is a Professor of English and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and Director of the Humanities Center at Northeastern University. He works at the intersections of digital humanities and rhetoric, LGBTQ+, and feminist studies. Focusing on archives as key sites of cultural power, he studies the rhetorical work of queer and transgender archival collections in brick-and-mortar and digital spaces. Rawson is founder and director of the Digital Transgender Archive, an award-winning collection of trans-related historical materials, and he chairs the editorial board of the Homosaurus, an LGBTQ+ linked data vocabulary.