Well hello, my name is Lorna Ebner, I am a Ph.D. candidate at Stony Brook University. This summer I’ll be working to curate an online dataset for the Medical Heritage Library that highlights LGBTQ+ resource materials. Over the course of the next few months, I’ll be sifting through the over 300,000 available resources to create a narrated shelf of materials that focus on the LGBTQ+ community as it intersects with and around the history of medicine.
My experience with the LGBTQ+ community in an academic capacity began as a graduate student at Rutgers-Newark, where I had the privilege to work closely with the Queer Newark Oral History Project. QNOHP is an oral history collection focusing on LGBTQ+ Newarkers and allies. This inspiring organization highlights over 70 local voices and creates a space for these voices that is accessible to a wide audience while honoring the local community in Newark. Check out their website by clicking on the image below.
My plans for the summer fellowship with the Medical Heritage Library are threefold:
· To create a curated shelf that highlights the incredible and numerous resources the Medical Heritage Library has to offer, which will serve as a gateway for future researchers interested in the intersection of medical and LGBTQ+ history.
· To narrate the resources in such a way that it broadens the scope of understanding about how the LGBTQ+ community evolved and transformed over time in the United States.
· Most importantly, to highlight the diversity and agency within the source material in regards to the LGBTQ+ community and create a widely accessible range of resource materials.
I’m looking forward to sharing not only my findings, but also my research and creative process with you in the coming months.
My current academic endeavor is my dissertation, or as I refer to it, that pesky little project. Tentatively titled “Burning Contagion,” though in my head I call it “We didn’t start the fire,” the dissertation analyzes five cases of arson against healthcare facilities, from 1774-1901. It attempts to understand how medical facilities became a focal point for political unrest, and in doing so, questions the idea of the “mindless mob” by replacing the moniker “mindless” with “minded” in order to show arson was enacted through contemporary knowledge rather than ignorance. As one of my professor’s at Stony Brook used to say “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme,” and the ongoing pandemic has taught me a lot, so much so that I almost thought of it as a form of ethnographic research. (Ha!)
A brief follow-up: In the midst of writing this blog post the Supreme Court rescinded Roe v. Wade. As someone who recently moved from a state where the right to bodily autonomy is protected to one of the most restrictive states in the country, I am enraged and terrified. More than ever, I feel the importance of the Medical Heritage Library and this project to highlight marginalized voices and the history, good and bad, that haunts the United States and informs present ideologies and actions.