Graduate Technical Methods Seminar in Inclusive Design, structured around the inaugural Stratigakos Fellowship and its associated symposium, Queer(ing) Space. Students were actively involved in the planning and execution of the symposium, while concurrently learning about and contributing to its conceptual discourse. Queer(ing) Space builds on the premise that queer spaces are not created, but that instead spaces are put to queer use. It understands and activates "queer" as a verb rather than an adjective, prioritizing appropriation, deconstruction, and activism as primary methods of intervention. Students actively engaged with texts in the Stratigakos Collection and their affiliated authors while concurrently studying Buffalo, the host city of the symposium, as a case study for this type of queer activism and reclamation.
Students proposed temporary, activist-scaled interventions at Buffalo City Court, which stands on the site of now-demolished gay bar where the Mattachine Society of Western New York was founded in 1979. The interventions were compiled into a deck of instructional “playing cards” which could be applied to other sites of forgotten queer histories.
Work by Bailee Legnetto, Michael Marun, Kira Podmayersky, Bianca Wilson, Kayla Clark, Catherine Gnecco, Katie Nelson
