91´ÎÔª

In 2024, students and faculty in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at the 91´ÎÔª, designed and carried out an oral history project to record the experiences of LGBTQIA2S+ people who were contemplating, or who had already left the state of Montana in response to adverse legislative and cultural changes. Titling the project Queer In and Out of Montana (QI&O), students recorded over a dozen dynamic life stories of queer people. The interviews have been transcribed and are available to the public through UM Mansfield Library Archives and Special Collections on .

In Fall 2025, a group of students in Jody Pavilack’s public history class, Practicing Oral History, designed and carried out a second phase of the QI&O MT Oral History Project, broadening the focus to include both queer and non-queer persons with stories to share about LGBTQIA2S+ life in Montana. Public history students and faculty recorded over two dozen life stories that convey diverse, moving, lived experiences. These interviews are in the final stage of transcription and preparation and will soon be added to the collection in Scholarworks. 

Students learned the practice of oral history as they strategized and recorded these engaging life stories. From seeking out narrators and developing explorative questions to battling recording equipment, students received a detailed education in the oral history discipline. About the learning process, student Ann Marie Carbin shared that “As an interviewer, one of the most rewarding aspects of the project… was becoming acquainted with the class members working on the project. The instructor and her assistant, the graduate students and the undergraduates, were a diverse group of kind, thoughtful, enthusiastic and collaborative colleagues.” Carbin highlighted that she especially enjoyed the several times students practiced for their formal interviews by interviewing one another. Public History graduate student India Hite described the project as “ideally, only a small step in a long march of queer histories being added to the historical archive and being stewarded into the future.” Hite, who is nonbinary themselves, highlighted that participating in the project has cultivated a deeper, richer sense of their own identity as a queer Montanan and expressed gratitude for the overall experience.

Carbin described what she hoped to share through the QI&O project: “I would like the public to know about the project itself—its aims, the amount of time and work that goes into creating a dedicated archive, and why this one is so valuable . . . because it promotes understanding, mutual respect, and celebration of diversity.” An interdisciplinary endeavor between the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program, the Public History Program, and the History Department, the Queer In and Out of Montana Oral History Project is a collaborative university-community effort designed to preserve life histories for posterity and future researchers.

For more information or to support the QI&O MT project, contact Professor Jody Pavilack  (jody.pavilack@umontana.edu). For more information about the Public History Program at UM, contact Director Leif Fredrickson (leif.fredrickson@umontana.edu).