#uw madison

[midwestaesthetics]

Memorial Student Union and Picnic Point, University of Wisconsin. Madison, Wisconsin...

#midwest #nature #hiking #summer #madison wisconsin #wisconsin #uw madison #lakes #isthmus

[6thomas]

“omg mark estapa is such a menace”. . . do you KNOW who roman ahcan is? YOU CANT OUTDO THE DOEEEER

#roman ahcan #romanahcan #uw #uw madison #uw hockey #uw madison hockey #umich #umich hockey #last tags just for visibility :]

[uwmadarchives]

Mapping LGBTQ+ Spaces through the Years

by Chloe Foor, Student Historian 2022/2024

Hello everyone! Welcome to a little project update from your local Student Historian in Residence. The last two months have been filled with research, data collection, and learning new software programs. I’ve had a great time, and I can’t wait to share what I’ve been doing. 

I spent the first few weeks of October doing more research, scouring both the Archives and the Internet to find more locations significant to LGBTQ+ Madisonians over the years. While in the Archives, I looked at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Folder 1 Subject File, which has materials from the 1990s to the mid-2010s (see University of Wisconsin-Madison Subject Files collection. uac69, Box 75, Folder 10. University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives, Madison, WI.). The most interesting things to me was a document written by Joe Elder on Reflection on the LGBTQ movement on Campus, which he wrote in the aftermath of the 2016 Orlando Nightclub Shooting. It provided some really interesting perspectives on the LGBTQ+ Rights movement in Madison. 

Online, my main source of information is the Wisconsin LGBTQ+ History Project, which I wrote more about in my last blog post. I didn’t realize that they had digitized copies of old guides that listed LGBTQ+ friendly businesses as far back as 1963. It was fascinating to go through those and find the locations that queer people frequented in the past. The most interesting place that I found that was listed was called Apple Island, which I have seen before in archival research, but I didn't know it was in Madison. Apple Island was a community organization created to promote women's culture, and it was reported that 90% of the clientele were lesbians. My favorite part of the research project is finding these lesser-known spaces, and I can’t wait for more people to be able to easily access them through my project! 

Outside of finding new “spaces,” I spent some time filling in the spreadsheet I use to keep track of each location.  For each space, I list the title, address, significance, and years it was active, but sometimes it's hard to find all of that information on the first pass through. Sometimes, I'll just write the title and a short description, and then I can go back through later and fill in the rest. Now, all 165 entries are fully fleshed out!

With the spreadsheet being fully populated, I was ready to import it into ArcGIS, a digital mapping software. It was able to read the spreadsheet into different categories and add every space to a map! In the above image, all of the gray makers are for “Purge,” the blue markers are for “Community,” the orange markers are for “Commercial Area,” the purple markers are for “Healthcare,” the pink markers are for “Media,” the green markers are for “Politics,” and the red markers are for “UW”! If you click on a marker, a pop-up window will display with information about the location, including beginning and end dates as well as a short description.

Here is the pop-up for The Crossing:

In the coming months, I will be working on making a public website to share my research! I also want to host an outreach event in collaboration with the Gender and Sexuality Campus Center and Phi Alpha Theta, the History Honors Society. I’m sure more meetings on the topic will come up in the coming months, and I will make sure to keep you posted! For now, though, that’s all from me!

#uwmadison #uw madison #lgbtqia history #lgbt history #queer history #wisconsin #madison wisconsin

[wrong-brothers]

Van Hise II

Canon FT-QL

Kodak Gold 200

9.XX.2019

#photography #queer artists #35mm #macro #flower #garden #uw madison #madison #wisconsin #filmisnotdead #film #vintage

[pretensesoup]

Great Building or Greatest Building?

Okay, I did a TikTok about this, but I'm not going to force you to look at it unless you want to. Instead, regard this photograph of the best building on the UW-Madison campus:

Quick facts:

1/ Built in 1894. The style is called Romanesque Revival or Norman Revival. (The building is definitely more Norman than Roman, right?)

2/ It was actually an armory for quite a long time and was the home of the ROTC program until like 1970. ROTC was compulsory at UW off and on until the 70s.

3/ Because of this, the building was firebombed in January 1970. As far as I can tell, no one was injured, but there was about $20,000 in damage done. (It's unclear if the number is in 1970s dollars or current dollars.)

4/ There was a pool there (male only) that permitted nude swimming until 1973 (when it became co-ed and, presumably, required suits).

5/ Comes up a bit in my novel, although mostly as a landmark/"Ulysses went to the gym" type of thing. I was a little worried about mentioning it, because it's such a weird/cool building I thought people might not believe it if I described how it actually looks. But I did. The Madisonians who have read the novel really liked the hat tip.

6/ It's used for administrative stuff now, but the track (up above where the gymnasium was) is still there.

#architecture #castle #uw madison #dionysus in wisconsin #novel

[buckysbattleground]

Where the sun rests

#me #photography #college #sunset #madison #wi #uw madison

[petsincollections]

Open House at U.W. Madison

An associate of U.W.'s "World-Famous" Primate Laboratory holding out a two-month old monkey for a young smiling girl to pet as her parents are looking on.

Published in the Wisconsin State Journal on October 211, 1962. 1 of 3 images.

Wisconsin Historical Society

#monkeys #primate labs #children #uw madison #wisconsin historical society #wisconsin state journal #children and monkeys

[heliohawk]

#brutalism #uw madison

[fisarmonical]

Young men gathered around a table engage in various activities, including studying, smoking pipes, playing instruments (mandolin, guitar), and working at a typewriter. Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives Collections.

#wisconsin #uw madison #vintagemen #pipesmoking #pipemen #retro men #vintage men #historic photo #affectionate men #menswear

[wdwbabes]

more game day fits, but a different team

#uw badgers hockey #uw badgers #uw madison #wisconsin badgers #badgers hockey #zach urdahl #caden brown #owen lindmark #corson ceulemans #daniel laatsch #dominick mersch #mathieu de st phalle #matty de st phalle #luke lamaster #mike vorlicky #liam malmquist #sam stange #carson bantle

[6thomas]

Although I am a wisco unliker, I will not be tolerating any Charlie Stramel hate.

#charlie stramel #charliestramel #uw madison #uw madison hockey #university of wisconsin #university of Wisconsin hockey #university of wisconsin badgers

[uwmadarchives]

Oral History Behind the Scenes

by Chloe Foor, Student Historian 2022/2023

The last two months have consisted of many emails and many cups of chai tea. I have officially begun the process of reaching out to potential oral history candidates, which is equal parts exciting and terrifying. I have never conducted an oral history before, but Troy Reeves, the head of the Oral History Program at UW, has been nothing short of incredible in supporting me and in answering any questions I may have. The process of creating an oral history project, unsurprisingly, began with learning about the practice of oral history. I learned so much about why and how people conduct oral histories. After this, I used a planning worksheet to determine a realistic timeline for my project, based on both the materials that I have at my disposal (a lot), and how much time I realistically have to conduct these interviews (less than a lot). For every hour of actually interviewing someone, there’s about eight hours of behind-the-scenes work consisting of research, pre-interviews, transcribing, adding metadata, and many other tasks to ensure that the oral history interview will be accessible for as many people as possible. I won’t lie, this process looked very daunting at first, but Troy was incredible at helping me break it down step-by-step.

In conducting preliminary research for the project, I spent a lot of time on pewresearch.org, a site that “informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world” through polls. They have conducted polls on religious people’s opinions on the LGBTQ+ community, as well as how the LGBTQ+ community feels about religion (side note: I’m taking STAT 324 right now, and it’s very interesting to see what I’m learning being used on real life data!). The Human Rights Campaign also has articles of “Stances of Faith on LGBTQ Issues'' across various denominations, which I referenced a lot while conducting preliminary research. Around this time, I also started creating a list of people who I might want to interview for the project. I did this by visiting The Crossing, St. Francis House, and PresHouse, which are all religious centers on campus that have a long history with the LGBTQ+ community, and talking to the lead pastors or directors of those churches. They gave me great background information about how those locations have historically interacted with the students of UW, both queer and not, and some of them even provided me with potential oral history candidates. Scott Seyforth, one of the founders of Madison’s LGBTQ Oral History Project and the Madison LGBTQ Archive, also sent me a list of possible contacts.

Right now, I am in the process of reaching out to these people and seeing if they want to be involved in my project. If they are interested in hearing more, I will set up a pre-interview session with them where I inform them about my project and the topics that I am hoping to cover. After all of this, we schedule a time for the actual oral history interview to be conducted if they are still willing. Actually conducting the interview itself is the most daunting part of this process to me, but it is also the part that I am the most excited for. I had no idea how much work went into the process of collecting oral histories, and I feel incredibly grateful that I can go through this process with such a great support team.

In addition to this, I have also spent a lot of times in the archives leafing through old articles in the Daily Cardinal, mostly from the years 1969-1971. These years are the period during which the Madison Alliance of Homosexual Equality (MAHE) was formed, so I was interested in seeing the immediate reactions of the student body to this. Overall, they aren’t really mentioned except for the occasional announcement that they will be meeting in the basement of St. Francis House, a church on campus.

The first mention of MAHE in the Daily Cardinal, from November 25, 1969

They organized a “coming out” dance at the Union in March of 1970 and held a day-long “teach-in” on May 1, 1970. This “teach-in” had events where they would discuss “Religious Views on Homosexuality,” “Sociological Aspects of Homosexuality,” “Female Homosexuality, Lesbianism,” “Gay Life,” “The Meaning of Gay Liberation,” a screening of the movie “Matron in Uniform,” a German film from 1931 that featured “forbidden love between two women,” and closed with a dance at the Union.

Article announcing the MAHE “Coming Out” dance, from March 13, 1970

MAHE Day Schedule, from April 29, 1970

These scraps of queer history in Madison aren’t much to go off of, but they still provide invaluable insight into what the priorities of the LGBTQ+ community were at the beginning of the rights movement. All of these were fascinating to read, and if you’re interested at all, make sure to book an appointment at the Archives to check them out! You can do this here.

That’s all from me! I will hopefully have most of my oral history interviews conducted by the next time I write a blog post. Thank you for reading and for coming on this journey with me!

#student historians #undergraduate research #campus history #uw madison #lgbtqia history

[wrong-brothers]

Morning Escape I / II

Canon FT-QL

Kodak Gold 200

9.18.2019

#photography #queer artists #35mm #lake #landscape #nature #sailing #midwest #uw madison #lake mendota #madison #wisconsin #filmisnotdead #film #vintage

[mangodragonfruit22]

#wisconsin hockey #college hockey #hockey #uw madison #mathieu de st phalle #hockey boys

[sailaweigh]

Postdoc shenanigans in the electronics lab. The benches used to be covered with test equipment. New stuff has been commissioned, but in the meantime at least someone's putting them to good use.

#med physics #wimr #uw madison

[buckysbattleground]

#me #photography #college #academia #astrophysics #astronomy #madison #wi #uw madison