in the Career Service’s project “Queer Life – Between Persecution & Emancipation” international students of JGU and the FORTHEM Alliance – with the help of the Haus des Erinnerns Mainz – spent months exploring questions of identity, gender, sexual orientation, and social norms to uncover the hidden stories of queer people in different countries throughout history. What was discovered during the project is now being showcased in an exhibition and a workshop.
And you can join in!
Questions about identity, gender, sexual orientation, and what society calls ‚cultural norms‘ are currently hot topics worldwide. Yet both the struggles as well as the achievements of queer people are nothing new. Long before the term ‚queer‘ was established in this context, queer people had to navigate between discrimination and empowerment. Still, too few know their stories.
Our international and interdisciplinary project “Queer Life” aims to help educate about queer lives, focusing on experiences between persecution and emancipation.
We want to explore questions such as:
- What forms of emancipation have queer people experienced throughout history?
- What types of persecution did they have to endure?
- How are their stories remembered?
- What are the local differences and similarities across countries?
- and other topics & questions
The project presentation showcased the results of the collaborative research. It featured historical and contemporary personal accounts from notable queer figures in Mainz, as well as from the rest of Germany, Spain, Eastern Europe, and non-European countries. The presentation explored language, symbols, and labels; queer pop culture and art; as well as the power of laws, medicine, and framing.
In the workshop, we explored untold and forgotten stories of queer individuals and activists, and got to know their lives and struggles. Together we created individual zines about what we discovered.
