Generating Queers

In response to student requests, project co-founders Adam Greteman and Karen Morris created and co-taught a new course in Fall 2020 entitled “Generating Queers” at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Now in its third year, the course offers a hybrid pedagogical experience alternating between class seminars and intergenerational dialogues. Within the seminars, students engage key texts, documentaries, and podcasts that address various LGBTQ+ historical and present circumstances. Paired with this work are intergenerational dialogues that allow students and elders to think through such issues in dialogue with experiences that span decades.

Story-telling has become a focus of our intergenerational dialogues, and we often spend the first hour of each meeting listening to participants talk about their personal experiences with topics and moments important to LGBTQ+ history. Storytelling allows members across generations to learn about and see commonalities and differences in lived experience, bringing to life the scholarship engaged in seminars.

For their final project, students and elders work in small intergenerational groups to create something that embodies their experiences.