Lesbian Herstory Archives

The Lesbian Herstory Archives houses an extraordinary amount of materials related to Lesbian life and identities. For nearly 50 years, people from around the country and the world have visited us and spent time with our collection for many different reasons. In that time, the Archives itself has also been a source of fascination and inspiration for countless scholars and artists.

From books to sculptures to comedic parodies, below (in date order, from earliest to most recent), is a listing of original scholarly and creative work that makes use of LHA or its materials as a significant aspect of or inspiration for the work. This list is not complete and may be updated over time.

Where possible, links go directly to the work mentioned, but in some cases go to documentation of the work. If you experience difficulty locating any of these materials, please reach out to us.

Note: This bibliography does not include news articles, or radio/television programs about the Archives, only original scholarship and creative work.

After you’ve read the list thoroughly, if you notice that we’re missing something, please post a note in the comments or send us an email.

If you’re interested in making work about the Archives, we strongly encourage you to first spend time with the collection itself and the materials below in order to understand what has already been done. 

We receive frequent requests from artists and researchers to support their projects in various ways. As an all-volunteer organization, with a very large collection that’s always in need of our attention, our capacity to support such projects is extremely limited. Many of the most common questions can be answered by taking the time to review existing materials and getting to know the collection by attending our open hours.

Books / Anthologies / Journal Issues

• Between Us: A Legacy of Lesbian Love Letters, by Kay Turner (Chronicle Books, 1996)
• An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures, by Ann Cvetkovich (Duke University Press, 2003)
• The Archival Turn in Feminism: Outrage in Order, by Kate Eichhorn (Temple University Press, 2014)
• Out of the Closet, Into the Archives: Researching Sexual Histories, edited by Amy L. Stone and Jaime Cantrell (State University of New York Press, 2015)
• Queering Archives: Intimate Tracings, edited by Daniel Marshall, Kevin P. Murphy, and Zeb Tortorici (Duke University Press, 2015)
• Retroactivism in the Lesbian Archives: Composing Pasts and Futures (Studies in Rhetorics and Feminisms), by Jean Bessette (Southern Illinois University Press, 2017)
• Sinister Wisdom 118: Forty-Five Years / A Tribute to the Lesbian Herstory Archives, edited by Elvis Bakaitis, Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz, and Red Washburn (2020)
• Documenting Rebellions: A Study of Four Lesbian and Gay Archives in Queer Times, by Rebecka Taves Sheffield (Litwin Books, 2020)
• Information Activism: A Queer History of Lesbian Media Technologies, by Cait McKinney (Duke University Press, 2020)

Articles / Essays / Book Chapters / Theses / Dissertations

• “An Interview with Joan and Deborah of the Lesbian Herstory Archives,” by Beth Hodges, in Sinister Wisdom (Issue 11, 1979)
• “The Will to Remember: The Lesbian Herstory Archives of New York,” by Joan Nestle, in Feminist Review (Volume 34, Issue 1, 1990)
• “An Activist’s Guide to Lesbian History: A Companion to the Video Not Just Passing Through,” by Polly Thistlethwaite (1998)
• “Building ‘A Home of Our Own’: The Construction of the Lesbian Herstory Archives,” by Polly Thistlethwaite, in Daring to Find Our Names: The Search for Lesbigay Library History (editor: James V. Carmichael Jr., Greenwood, 1998)
• “In the Archives of Lesbian Feelings: Documentary and Popular Culture,“ by Ann Cvetkovich, in Camera Obscura (Issue 49, Volume 17, Number 1, 2002)
• “Claiming History, Claiming Rights: Queer Discourses of History and Politics,” by Evangelia Mazaris (Dissertation, Brown University, 2010)
• “Videos in the Kitchen : The Lesbian Herstory Archives as a Moving-Herstorical-Image,” by Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz, in Films for the Feminist Classroom, (Issue 2 Supplement, 2010)
• “The Queer Art of the Counterarchive,” in Cruising the Archive: Queer Art and Culture in Los Angeles, 1945-1980, (editors: David Frantz and Mia Locks, ONE National Lesbian and Gay Archives, 2011)
• “Historicizing Identity: The Lesbian Herstory Archives and the Production of Space,” by Joana Coppi, (Master’s thesis, Humboldt University of Berlin, 2012)
• “At Home With The Lesbian Herstory Archives,” by Madhu Narayan, in Enculturation (2013)
• “Living Our Lives through Their Words: Reflections on the Marathon Reading of Work by Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, November 17, 2012,” by Alexis Clements, Flavia Rando, and Shawn(ta) Smith, in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies (Volume 34, Number 2, 2013)
• “A Genealogy of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, 1974-2014,” by Rachel F. Corbman, in Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies (Volume 1, Article 1, 2014)
• “Out of the Basement and on to the Internet: Digitizing Oral History Tapes at the Lesbian Herstory Archives,” by Cait McKinney, in No More Potlucks (2014)
• “Tape by tape: Digital projects at the Lesbian Herstory Archives,” by Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz, in Queers Online: LGBT Digital Practices in Libraries, Archives, and Museums (editor: Rachel Wexelbaum, Litwin Books, 2015)
• “Useful In/stability: the Dialectical Production of the Social and Spatial Lesbian Herstory Archives,” by Jen Jack Gieseking, in Radical History Review (Issue 122, 2015)
• “A Critical Archival Pedagogy: The Lesbian Herstory Archives and a Course in Radical Lesbian Thought,” by Kailah R. Carden, Sabina E. Vaught, Arturo Muñoz, Vanessa Pinto, Cecilia Vaught, and Maya Zeigler, in Radical Teacher (Volume 105, 2016)
• “Getting from then to now: Sustaining the Lesbian Herstory Archives as a lesbian organization,” by Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz, Flavia Rando, Rachel Corbman, Deborah Edel, Morgan Gwenwald, Joan Nestle, and Polly Thistlethwaite, in Journal of Lesbian Studies (Volume 20, Issue 2, 2016)
• “The Most Fantastic Lie: The Invention of Lesbian Histories,” by Alyssa E. Schwendener (Master’s thesis, California State University, Long Beach, 2016)
• “Graphic Activism: Lesbian Archival Library Display,” by Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz, in Gender Issues and the Library: Case Studies of Innovative Programs and Resources (editors: Carol Smallwood and Lura Sanborn, McFarland & Company, 2017)
• “The Ageing of the Archives: Community, Conflict, and Queer Potential at the Lesbian Herstory Archives,” by Rebekah Orr (Dissertation, Syracuse University, 2017)
• “Archiving Black Lesbians in Practice: The Salsa Soul Sisters Archival Collection,” by Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz, in The City Amplified: Oral Histories and Radical Archives (editors: Allison Guess and Prithi Kanakamedala, The Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY, 2019)
• “Cats in the Archive,” by Rachel Corbman, for the New-York Historical Society (2019)
• “Lesbian Networks of (Cat) Care During the Sex Wars,” by Rachel Corbman, in Notches (2020)

Zines

• Black Lesbians in the 70’s and Before: An at Home Tour at the Lesbian Herstory Archives (2010), by Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz
• Black Lesbians in the 80’s @ Lesbian Herstory Archives (2014), by Sherley Olopherne
• Black Lesbians in the 90’s @ Lesbian Herstory Archives (2014), by Sherley Olopherne
• Black Lesbians @ Lesbian Herstory Archives: 2000-10 (2014), by Sherley Olopherne

Visual Art, Photo & Image-Based Exhibitions / Projects / Works

• Mining the Archives (2008-2010), by fierce pussy
• A Girl’s Journey into the Well of Forbidden Knowledge (2010), by Allyson Mitchell (An article on this work, written by Ann Cvetkovich with Allyson Mitchell, was published in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (Volume 17, Number 4, 2011).)
• Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves (2011), by LJ Roberts
• Herstory Inventory (2012), by Ulrike Müller (An article on this work, written by Ann Cvetkovich, was published in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (Volume 29, Number 2, April 2023).)
• Archivist Fingers (2014), by Anna Campbell
• Herstory Inventory: 100 Feminist Drawings by 100 Artists (2014), by Ulrike Müller
• Lesbian Matters (2019), by Phoenix Lindsey-Hall
• The Wide World of Lesbian Cats, 1970-Today (2019), by Rachel Corbman

Films

• Not Just Passing Through (1994), by Jean Carlomusto, Dolores Pérez, Catherine Gund, and Polly Thistlethwaite
• The Watermelon Woman (1996), directed by Cheryl Dunye (Note: This film is a work of fiction and does not depict the Archives, however the Lesbian Herstory Archives and some of its materials served as part of the inspiration for the film.)
• A Brief Herstory (2016), directed by Megan Rossman
• Love Letter Rescue Squad (2016), directed by Megan Rossman
• The Archivettes (2018), directed by Megan Rossman
• All We’ve Got (2019), directed by Alexis Clements

Plays

• Unknown (2012), written by Alexis Clements (Note: This play was inspired by the Lesbian Herstory Archives but is a work of fiction and does not include factual depictions of the Archives.)