Exhibit Opening – DO SAY GAY: BANNED BOOKS AND LGBTQ+ FREEDOMS

Join us the first weekend of Pride 2024 for DO SAY GAY, a Public Humanities exhibition opening and drag story hour on Friday, June 7th, from 6-8 PM at Gerber/Hart!

The event includes readings from banned books, proud displays of queer history, and a celebration of queer voices at Gerber/Hart LGBTQ+ Library & Archives. Twenty-one students from the DePaul University HumanitiesX course, DO SAY GAY: Banned Books and LGBTQ+ Freedoms, in collaboration with Gerber/Hart, created this public exhibition featuring challenged LGBTQ+ books and queer archival materials. Dedicated to the preservation and uplifting of queer voices in the face of those who try to silence them, this occasion launches a summer-long exhibit highlighting four topics areas: Save Our Children, Silence=Death, Open Books, Open Minds, and We Have Always Been Banned. 

DO SAY GAY: Banned Books and LGBTQ+ Freedoms, is an Experiential Learning course team-taught by Dra. Heather Montes Ireland (WGS) and Prof. Barrie J Borich (ENG/LGBTQ Studies) about contemporary book bans and their relationship to the democratic role of LGBTQ+ libraries and archives in the preservation, celebration, and continuation of intersectional queer lives. Queer books represent the possibilities, traumas, and beauties of LGBTQ+ lives, often in spite of forces attempting to remove these works from libraries and schools.

Course participants read banned books about LGBTQ+ lives, explore material collected in the Gerber/Hart Library and Archives, investigate queer repression across time, and study theory about censorship, LGBTQ+ rights, and democracy. This HumanitiesX offering, made possible by a grant from the Mellon Foundation and support from DePaul’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, is a Department of English and Department of Women’s and Gender Studies combined project-based learning course cross-listed with American Studies, LGBTQ Studies, and Liberal Studies.