September 9, 2020: Locating Your Place in LGBTQ History: A Writing Workshop with Jacob Alden Sargent

With instructor Dr. Jacob Alden Sargent, we are offering a writing-based history exploration workshop!

Writing down your personal memories in relation to LGBTQ history can be healing and empowering. In this workshop, we’ll engage in a writing exercise, read short excerpts from LGBTQ memoir writers, and discuss ways to use shared histories and personal archives to craft your story. You will be introduced to ways to frame a story using rich historical and personal details and to explore your personal voice. At the end of the workshop, you’ll leave with a few exercises and a reading list to continue your writing-based history exploration on your own.

Please bring a notepad and a pen, and be prepared to start charting your first story in your memoir project.

Dr. Jacob Alden Sargent is Associate Director for Instruction and Research for Occidental College’s Center for Digital Liberal Arts and has been affiliated faculty in the Cultural Studies Program. Jacob earned his BA in Music and Sociology from Bates College and his PhD in Sociology from the University of Virginia where he published articles on labor and technology in knowledge and culture industries. He brings a background in sociology and faculty development to Oxy where he manages instructional and co-curricular programs for information literacy in the context of institutional transformation. He most recently taught courses on the history of liberal arts education, where students did hands on research in the college archive, and on gender identities, where students critically examined what it means to quantify human identities and behaviors. He is currently writing a memoir.

Image credit: Old typewriter with books. George Hodan, photographer.