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40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community: Collecting and Curating Local LGBT Experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19 Oral Histories

 Collection
Identifier: LVLGBT-022

Scope and Contents

Series I consists of 9 oral histories focusing on the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, with reflections on the emerging COVID-19 pandemic that was happening at the time of the interviews.

Series II consists of 22 interviews that focus on the experiences of members of the LGBTQ+ community of the Lehigh Valley during the first summer of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dates

  • 2020

Conditions Governing Access

The collection is open for research and made available publicly online.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright for these oral history recordings is held by the interview subject(s). They made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interviews for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source.

Biographical / Historical

In the spring of 2020, the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive received a grant to collect oral histories and written stories for 40 Years of Public Health in the Lehigh Valley’s LGBT Community: Collecting and Curating Local LGBT Health Experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19.

The collection consists of oral histories from individuals who experienced the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as oral histories from members of the local community as they lived through 2020's summer of Covid-19. Running through both are the themes of dealing with the fear of an emerging health crisis, loneliness and isolation, and coming together as a community in support and activism.

The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Extent

31 oral histories

Title
40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community: Collecting and Curating Local LGBT Experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19 Oral Histories
Status
Completed
Author
compiled by Kristen Leipert
Date
October 2020
Description rules
dacs
Language of description
English

Repository Details

Part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive Repository

Contact:
Muhlenberg College, Trexler Library Special Collections
2400 Chew Street
Allentown PA 18104 USA