Strategic Collecting Direction

Global Lavender Voices

The Hay has established the Global Lavender Voices strategic direction to celebrate the lived experiences, contributions, accomplishments, and culture of LGBTQIA2S communities, both in the United States and internationally. The Richard G. Katzoff Collection, which includes more than 4,700 volumes of gay pulp fiction (1950s–1990s), sadomasochistic fiction and pictorial erotica, and contemporary lesbian fiction, provides a window into the role that literature and other ephemeral publications played in the development of LGBTQIA2S subcultures in the United States. This material is complemented by a growing collection of rare published and ephemeral material produced by gay communities in Japan. Printed holdings are complemented by literary, archival collections including the records of On Our Backs, the lesbian erotica magazine, and the papers and book collections of queer writers John Preston (erotica and non-fiction), Scott O’Hara (pornographic film), and Rudy Kikel (poetry). The transformative influence of queer women and gender theorists on higher education and the arts in the United States and internationally from the 1970s to the present is documented in the Pembroke Center Archives. Notable collections within the PCA are the papers of Anne Fausto-Sterling (biology and gender development), Barbara Johnson (literary criticism and psychoanalysis), and Kate Bornstein ’69 (performance artist and “gender outlaw”). The unique holdings within this strategic collecting direction have been strongly enhanced by the enduring partnership between the Hay and the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women.

Strategic growth

Future collecting will focus on these communities with particular emphasis on the experiences of Black and Indigenous people in the U.S., Brazil, and the Caribbean.

• Lesbian
• Trans*
• Non-binary
• Two-spirit peoples

The Hay has identified this strategic direction as an opportunity to connect with Health and History, one of the University’s integrative themes in the sciences.

• Focused expansion of the Hay’s History of Medicine collections will place emphasis on LGBTQIA2S healthcare

Global Lavender Voices Anchor Collections

Anne Fausto-Sterling papers, Pembroke Center Archives: Personal and professional papers of the Nancy Duke Lewis Professor Emerita of Biology and Gender Studies at Brown University. Fausto-Sterling’s scholarship focuses on the biology of gender, sexual identity, and intersexuality. Also lesbian activism in Rhode Island.

Gaylactic Network records: The Gaylactic Network records consist of administrative records, newsletters, correspondence and promotional material for the years 1986–2005 pertaining to and were compiled by Franklin Hummel. The collection covers the activities of both the Gaylactic Network and most of its local member organizations, as well as their annual conference Gaylaxicon.

Kate Bornstein papers, Pembroke Center Archives: Personal collection of performer, playwright, author, and transgender activist Kate Bornstein who graduated from Brown University as Albert Bornstein in 1969. The collection documents Bornstein’s personal and professional life and trans activism, and includes biographical information, correspondence, diaries, conference material, draft writings, writings by other authors, subject files, print material, ephemera, photographs, and electronic records dating from 1910–2018.

Malana Krongelb zine collection, Pembroke Center Archives: The Malana Krongelb zine collection consists of administrative files and zines that focus on social justice and marginalized identities, dating from 1974 to 2018. Areas of strength include zines by and about people of color, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and other queer peoples, disabled people, interpersonal violence, sex and relationships, sex work, the prison industrial complex, self-care, feminism, and punk.

On Our Backs records: Organizational records for On our Backs, the first women-run erotica magazine and the first magazine to feature lesbian erotica for a lesbian audience in the United States. It ran from 1984 to 2006.

Scott O’Hara papers: Literary and personal papers, 1979–1998, of Scott O’Hara (1961–1998), pornographic film actor, author, magazine publisher.

Richard G. Katzoff collection: Consists primarily of literary works relating to gays and lesbians, with a small component of history and sociology; most are U.S. publications. The core of the Collection is the gift of books, primarily novels dating from the 1970s and 1980s, received in 1991 from the estate of Richard Katzoff, supplemented by the library and personal writings of John Preston, journalist, author and editor of gay literature (the Library also houses Preston’s papers). In addition, the Collection includes the publications of Larry Townsend (sadomasochistic fiction and pictorial erotica), many books from the library of Edmund White, an extensive collection of contemporary lesbian fiction, and many other smaller donations of gay and lesbian writings. Materials continue to be added to the Collection by gift and purchase; an endowment has been established for that purpose by the Katzoff family.

John Preston papers: John Preston authored over 30 books, ranging from fiction and erotica to such important non-fiction titles as Personal Dispatches: Writers Confront AIDS and Hometowns: Gay Men Write About Where They Belong. The Preston archive is especially important in that it contains many thousands of letters between Preston and a vast array of authors that comment upon matters both literary and socio-historical. Among Preston’s most prolific correspondents was Ann Rice, author of the Vampire Chronicles, whose papers provide insight into the link between straight/gay and erotic/mainstream fiction.