The Black Queer Studies Collection, which is designated digitally through notes in library catalog records, is meant to feature, promote and increase the discoverability of the UT Libraries’ unique holdings in the area of African and African Diasporic Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies. The Black Queer Studies Collection is a groundbreaking project in librarianship in that it addresses standard obstacles posed by the Library of Congress Subject Headings and information retrieval systems to locating materials by and about Black Diasporic LGBTQ people. Since materials in the Black Queer Studies Collection are cataloged according to their Library of Congress subject headings, they are physically separated throughout the library, the Local Note applied to the collection allows the materials to be gathered together digitally.
The Black Queer Studies Collection is a multi-disciplinary collection (containing fiction, poetry, literary and cultural criticism, films, etc). This means that the books are located in different sections of the library or even at different branch libraries, as they are added. Some are ebooks or streaming films, available online through the library catalog.
Current information organization practice frequently obscures access to materials by and/or about historically marginalized communities, particularly lesbian, gay, and transgender communities of color (de la tierra, 2008; Olson, 2000; Valentine, 2007). This erasure results in a lack not only of appropriate materials in users’ search results, but also of sufficient context for the incomplete list materials generated by a search.
Current cataloging practice, and the current list of Library of Congress Subject Headings, result in unreliable application of appropriate subject headings to materials about queer people of color. In current cataloging practice, catalogers at the Library of Congress or other institutions (sometimes including UT) use the (generally slow to evolve) Library of Congress Subject Headings list to add subject headings to the record for an item. The catalogers upload these records to the OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) database, and libraries, including the UT Libraries, copy available OCLC records for materials they add to the collections. Sometimes UT Libraries catalogers update the records, but this is not always possible.
With the introduction of the Black Queer Studies Collection, the UT Libraries acknowledge that a catalog is not neutral. The virtual collection begins to redress the erasure of Black diasporic lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender materials by the current absence of information organization tools, and this practice models a way for library professionals to counteract anti-professional claims to objectivity and take a rightful role in critical engagement with knowledge organization’s production of meaning (Andersen, 2006; Dunbar, 2006; Furner, 2009; Olson & Schlegl).
This proposal began in 2009 when UT professor Matt Richardson, faculty in the English Department, the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies, and the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, asked UT subject specialist Lindsey Schell whether it would be possible to improve catalog access to and representation of Black Diasporic LGBT materials at the UT Libraries. K.A. Hogan, a PhD graduate from UT’s English Department, had recently returned to UT as an MSIS student in the School of Information; she was interested in the challenges of cataloging and accessibility, particularly for LGBTQ materials. Hogan utilized Richardson’s scholarly analysis of African diasporic LGBTQ literature as an infrastructure for the proposal. In his work, Richardson articulates the transformative archive of the Black queer subject and uses scholarly articles, in part, to create key Black lesbian bibliographies (Richardson, “Bibliography,” “No More Secrets,” “Black Queer Memory”); these practices emphasize a body of literature and point to how critical librarianship, by creating or not creating similar lists, substantiates or undermines a field, a literature, and a readership. The BQSC employs scholarly collaboration and critical librarianship to generate visibility and literacy of African diasporic Queer and Transgender materials and supporting scholarly research within these subjects.
The collection started as 500 items and now includes over 1,000 items.
To read more about the process and collaboration that created the Black Queer Studies Collection, see K.A. Hogan’s article “Breaking Secrets” in the Catalog: Proposing the Black Queer Studies Collection at UT Austin.
These awards recognize, honor, and reward excellence in student scholarship and creative endeavors in African and African Diasporic Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies. Currently, the awards recognize scholarship and creative works by UT graduate and undergraduate students. Please see the tab for Black Queer Studies Student Awards for information about submissions and eligibility.
The award money is dispersed through the UT Libraries, and primarily draws from the Black Queer Studies Collection Endowment, originally funded through a crowd-sourced fundraising campaign in 2021.
Walking the Tightrope by 
We Are Owed by 
Black Gay Genius by 
The Black Trans Prayer Book by 
Don't Call Us Dead by
Finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry Winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection "[Smith's] poems are enriched to the point of volatility, but they pay out, often, in sudden joy."--The New Yorker Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power.Don't Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality--the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood--and a diagnosis of HIV positive. "Some of us are killed / in pieces," Smith writes, "some of us all at once."Don't Call Us Dead is an astonishing and ambitious collection, one that confronts, praises, and rebukes America--"Dear White America"--where every day is too often a funeral and not often enough a miracle.
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*A New York Times Bestseller* Sometimes you just have to laugh, even when life is a dumpster fire. With We Are Never Meeting in Real Life., "bitches gotta eat" blogger and comedian Samantha Irby turns the serio-comic essay into an art form. Whether talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making "adult" budgets, explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette--she's "35-ish, but could easily pass for 60-something"--detailing a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father's ashes, sharing awkward sexual encounters, or dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms--hang in there for the Costco loot--she's as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths.
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