Teaching with Local Stories: The Power & Possibility of LGBTQ+ Oral History for Student Learning

In this 1 hour 30-minute session, we will explore how the Queer Newark Oral History Project is a practical resource for educators implementing the N.J. LGBTQ+ curriculum mandate. Queer Newark’s repository is not only an asset for diverse LGBTQ+ historical inclusion but also provides other thematic inroads into local, state, and national history more broadly. This workshop will include curriculum ideas that take advantage of the project’s free online archive, including its keyword searchable oral histories and various other educational resources.

Facilitator:
Kristyn Scorsone (they/them) is a PhD candidate in the American Studies program at Rutgers University-Newark and longtime member of the Queer Newark Oral History Project. Their forthcoming dissertation, A Way Out of No Way: The Labor and Activism of Black Queer and Transgender Women in Newark, New Jersey, examines Black queer and transgender women’s labor and related activism in Newark from the 1970s to the present. In addition to co-curating the 2017 traveling exhibit At Home in Newark: Stories from the Queer Newark Oral History Project and producing and hosting the Queer Newark podcast, their writing has appeared in The Public Historian, NJ.com, History@Work, Notches, Out History, Out in New Jersey, and Los Angeles Music Blog. They will also have a chapter in the forthcoming anthology: Queer Newark: Stories of Resistance, Love, and Community. They are available as a consultant for educators regarding using the Queer Newark Oral History Project as an important diverse historical resource to meet New Jersey’s LGBTQ+ curriculum requirement. You can learn more about them on their website: https://www.kristynscorsone.com