2.2. Living Archives of Queer Memory and Resistance

In 2016, the United States witnessed the deadliest mass shooting in its modern U.S. history at an LGBTQ+ nightclub. Ten years later, this paper examines the Pulse Club interim memorial in Orlando, Florida, as a site of contested memory that reveals how public remembrance can both advance and obscure struggles for justice, identity, and collective healing. The central research question guiding this study is: Who holds the authority to define a memorial’s narrative, and how does the Pulse interim memorial mediate tensions of identity, patriotism, and grief following mass tragedy? To explore this question, the paper employs a qualitative visual-analytical methodology combining three in-person site visits to the memorial with a four-hour virtual reassessment of the interim memorial that displays 528 images. These photographs were coded and analyzed using interpretive frameworks from participatory culture (DeArmas et al., 2018), tracing recurring visual motifs and symbolic hierarchies within the memorial’s design. Findings reveal that the Pulse memorial privileges patriotic and institutional imagery (American flags, first responder badges, and corporate logos like Disney) while minimizing explicit expressions of queer and Latino identity. This symbolic emphasis transforms a tragedy rooted in homophobia and racialized violence into a universalized story of state-based unity and resilience. The paper argues that this selective visual framing reflects how institutional power structures can depoliticize sites of trauma, producing a sanitized form of remembrance that reinforces systemic inequalities. By interrogating the interplay between visual culture, power, and public mourning, this research situates the Pulse memorial within broader debates about memory activism and justice-oriented commemoration. This paper calls for a more inclusive and accountable memorial practice, one that centers marginalized identities and asks for more participatory models of monument-making.

The HIV/AIDS outbreak and activist response of the 1980s and ‘90s in the United States have become major sites of analysis for scholars of memory studies and the rhetoric of social movements. Because HIV and AIDS have not been eradicated, scholars have taken a recent interest in continued discourses between institutions and activists in our current moment, rather than just a historical one. The aim of my project is to do a comparative study of recent commemorative discourses surrounding HIV/AIDS in the United States (including those related to activities surrounding “World AIDS Day” annually) using two different historical rhetorics: the activist rhetoric of the 1980s and ‘90s (which I refer to using the term “counter-rhetoric”) and the United States government’s rhetoric addressing the disease from the same time period (which I refer to as the “official rhetoric”). By comparing the subjects of discussion, tropes, and mediums utilized by each of these rhetorical bodies, I aim to reveal how present-day discourses about HIV/AIDS and our collective memory of the disease’s peak in the United States have been shaped by a confluence of counter-rhetorics and official rhetorics from the time period. Additionally, my project will, following scholars like Kendall R. Phillips, Carole Blair and Bradford Vivian, argue that rhetorical methods of analysis are crucial to the academic study of collective memory. I also aim to discuss what the implication of this study is on the project of activism in general, and how the ongoing presence of HIV/AIDS as a global health emergency presents an exigence for continued activism.

In March of 1944 Josip Mardešić, captain of the antifascist National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia, the insurgent partisan armed force led by Communists, was prosecuted for being homosexual and subsequently sentenced to death. This is the only military court sentence for same-sex sexual behaviour known to be pronounced and carried out by Yugoslav Partisans. In the eyes of the tribunal, this young officer was a saboteur, a threat to the masculine and heroic image of the insurgent army, and his homosexuality an insult to both the nation and the army. Before the trial, Mardešić was not an ordinary soldier and officer. In fact, he was commanding the Croatian branch of the Yugoslav Antifascist Army’s communication division, a very important unit he himself established and developed in the first and most difficult years of the war. He was also a member of the Croatian General Staff. Had he survived the war, he would most certainly have become a highly decorated hero with a military or political career. In the last couple of years I have extensively researched Mardešić's life and his tragic end, and presented my findings at conferences and in journals and books. But apart from documenting and recounting his story, there is another crucial aspect to my research: the one that aims to establish a collective public memory of this unsung antifascist queer hero, both in the post-Yugoslav LGBT community and in national historic narratives. In my presentation, I will try to demonstrate the intricate ideological and political challenges facing this attempt at queering public memory. I will also reflect on methods used to overcome them, primarily the complex cooperation between artists, historians, and queer organizations, especially those working on LGBT archives and special collections.

The dominant paradigm of research on ageing and memory influenced a number of studies that consider older people as objects of care more than subjects of resistance, overshadowing significant aspects of ageing queerly. This paper stems from TRACE – Tracing Queer Citizenship Over Time, a 5-year research project funded by the European Research Council between 2023 and 2027, focused on queer ageing and memory in Southern Europe. Theoretically, this work sits at the intersection of queer ageing studies, and biographical and life-course studies to offers a socio-historical reading of embodied memories of people who faced and survived repression, criminalization and stigma. Methodologically, we conducted over 100 biographic narrative interviews with older LGBTQI+ participants over 60 years old across 5 countries that have experienced political and/or social repression of sexual and gender diversity: Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Slovenia. Through this rather large database of biographic narrative interviews, informed by socio-historical country-based analysis, it became possible to grasp a more encompassing understanding of the struggles for justice this generation went through. Perhaps more important, the analysis of this unique biographical data unveiled precious strategies both to resist authoritarian regimes and the stigma associated to aids, and to remain alive and proud to share their life story as a living archive of dignity and human rights. Our findings turn the experience of ageing inside out to reveal aspects that remain unsaid or overshadowed, namely the empowering potential of solitude, joy and pride in old age as lessons of resistance that contribute to sustain democracies in turbulent times.