Queering the Lone Star State: The Power of Narrative, the Agency of Meaning, and the Effort to Uncover LGBTQ History in Texas
Wesley Phelps (Professor, History, University of North Texas)
with a response by Josh Mayer (Anthropology & Social and Critical Inquiry, UConn)
Wednesday, October 21, 2026, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)
The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.
Queering the Lone Star State is a research-based, narrative-driven, documentary-style podcast series tracing LGBTQ history in Texas. Pairing traditional archival materials with oral history interviews, historical audio, and a compelling narrative structure, the podcast series broadens the boundaries of digital history and chronicles a neglected history that is at risk of suppression and erasure. The second season, scheduled to be released in October 2027, will explore twelve critical moments in the struggle for queer equality in Texas. Both individually and collectively, the twelve episodes that make up the new season will ask vital questions about human agency, demonstrate the potential of narrative social history to create a usable past, and highlight the process of meaning-making among individuals struggling to assert their civil rights and their human dignity.
Wesley Phelps is a Professor of History and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of North Texas. His research focuses on how democracy operates at the grassroots level and how marginalized groups of people have struggled to participate in the democratic experiment. His first book, A People’s War on Poverty: Urban Politics and Grassroots Activists in Houston, was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2014. Phelps’ second book, Before Lawrence v. Texas: The Making of a Queer Social Movement, was published by the University of Texas Press in 2023 and was awarded the Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize for the Best Book on Texas History by the Texas State Historical Association. He is also the creator of Queering the Lone Star State, a narrative podcast series tracing LGBTQ history in Texas.
Joshua Mayer is an assistant professor of Anthropology and Native American and Indigenous Studies (Department of Social and Critical Inquiry) at the University of Connecticut, where he is also affiliated with the Africana Studies Institute. He is a political anthropologist examining the relationships between settler capitalism, imperialism, territorial governance, and Black and Indigenous freedom. As a UCHI faculty fellow, he will be working on his book manuscript, “Territory as Freedom: Building a Black and Indigenous Future in Nicaragua,” which examines joint Rama and Kriol territory-building efforts amid settler colonial extraction, dispossession, and authoritarianism.
Access note
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