One thing I learned from Shoulders to Stand On is that Rochester was surprisingly relevant in the early days of LGBTQ+ movement. I wouldn’t have guessed that we had/have such a large queer community and that we were so involved in creating resources for queer people. I was especially interested in the radio show, Green Thursdays.
I think that the exhibit described in the article “‘Preversity to Diversity’ exhibit causes controversy at University of Rochester” is from 1991. I came to this conclusion through a few steps of research. First, it was clear that this article came from the University of Rochester’s the Empty Closet based on the content and what we had learned in class through the video we watched. So I Googled one of the authors, Susan Jordan, and her profile on Out Alliance said that she became the editor of the Empty Closet in 1989. This means that the article was likely written around that time. I then Googled the other author, Michele Moore. From this search, I got no results that provided me with useful information. My next step was to Google “perversity to diversity exhibit University of Rochester.” This yielded a result titled “Femininity Played Straight: The Significance of Being Lesbian” which stated in the fourth chapter that the exhibit was from 1991. I then double-checked the information that I had discovered by clicking on the next link of the Google search results. This link was titled “Destabilizing Theory: Contemporary Feminist Debates” and was from 1992. This solidified my belief that the exhibit was from 1991 because it makes sense that the author would have written an article about the exhibit in the following year.