Imagine That: The Production of Lesbian Place-Making in Vancouver during the 1970s and 1980s

• In Event: LGBTQ Place Making

Abstract

This paper will explore the complex affective, discursive, and material forms of lesbian ‘community’ and utopic politics that formed during the 1970s-80s in Vancouver, B.C. Using oral history interviews, queer and affective geographies, and lesbian/queer history, this paper will explore the myriad of ways that community was imagined, created, and sustained within lesbian feminist activist circles, as well as what structural and social contexts contributed to its relative disappearance post-1980s. In examining this history, the concepts of lesbian community and identity will both be critiqued for how they are shaped by race, whiteness, settler colonialism, class, and gender presentation.

Presenter

• Nadine Boulay, Simon Fraser University