The Lopez Historical Society will offer the following upcoming events that are open to the community.
Queers in Unexpected Places: Searching for (and Finding) Gender and Sexual Non-Conformity in the Rural and Early PNW
March 14, 2024, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m., Lopez Community Center for the Arts, 204 Village Rd, Lopez Island
Professor Peter Boag’s research and writing has helped explode the long-held popular belief that queer people have either not existed, or were not much tolerated in rural areas, especially in the mythic space of the “Old West.”
In this presentation, Boag will share his thoughts on the historical origins of this misplaced conviction and the stories of varied queer people who appeared in unexpected rural places in the early Pacific Northwest.
Peter Boag grew up in Portland, Oregon, and today is professor of history at Washington State University in Vancouver. His contributions to regional queer history include the book Same-Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest (2003), the award-winning volume Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past (2011), and the co-curated and award-winning 2021 exhibit at the Washington State Historical Society entitled “Crossing Boundaries: Portraits of a Transgender West.”
Suggested Donation $10; no one turned away for lack of funds.
Wrecked: Navigating the Past in the Graveyard of the Pacific
Apr 18, 2024, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m., Lopez Community Center for the Arts, 204 Village Rd, Lopez Island
What can the long history of shipwrecks in Oregon, Washington, and Vancouver Island tell us about the region’s past?
Drawn from a forthcoming UW Press book, this talk examines maritime misfortunes from the seventeenth to twenty-first centuries for clues into a new history of the northwest coast.
Coll Thrush is professor of history and Killam teaching laureate at the University of
British Columbia in Vancouver in unceded Coast Salish territories, and associate faculty at UBC’s Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies. He is the author of 2007’s Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place and co-editor of Phantom Past, Indigenous Presence: Native Ghosts in North American History & Culture (2011). His most recent book is Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire (2016), and he is a founding series editor of Indigenous Confluences at the University of Washington Press.
Suggested Donation $10; no one turned away for lack of funds.
