Rice’s LGBT oral history project to be celebrated Aug. 17

MEDIA ADVISORY

David Ruth
713-348-6327
david@rice.edu

Jeff Falk
713-348-6775
jfalk@rice.edu

Rice’s LGBT oral history project to be celebrated Aug. 17

HOUSTON – (Aug. 9, 2013) – Rice University’s Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality (CSWGS) is collaborating with Houston Public Library (HPL) to host “Who Will Tell Our Stories? Celebrating Houston’s LGBTQI Oral Histories” from 10:30 a.m. to noon Aug. 17 at the downtown library’s Julia Ideson Building, 550 McKinney St.

The event celebrates a student-led CSWGS community research project that has been collecting the oral histories of Houston lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community members. Since the project’s inception in 2007, more than 100 oral histories have been recorded and are in the process of being archived in the Woodson Research Center at the university’s Fondren Library.

The program will consist of a reception and remarks by Caroline Castillo, oral history and outreach librarian with HPL’s Houston Metropolitan Research Center; Arden Eversmeyer, founder and director of the Houston-based Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project; Brian Riedel, Rice professor in the practice of humanities and CSWGS assistant director; and Rice junior Cristell Perez, a summer oral-history intern with the Houston Area Rainbow Collective History (ARCH) consortium, of which CSWGS is a founding member. Perez will show a short film she created this summer on the oral history project. The event will conclude with an audience discussion on the future of the project.

For more information about ARCH and CSWGS’s community research project, visit http://houstonarch.pbworks.com.

Members of the news media who want to attend should RSVP to Jeff Falk, associate director of national media relations at Rice, at jfalk@rice.edu or 713-348-6775.

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