Students in LGBTQ course present final projects

Youngstown State University students completing a new course on LGBTQ issues present their final projects this week, ranging from an interpretive dance about losing a family member to AIDS to a video chronicling LGBTQ history from the late 1800s.

The projects will be presented 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 3, in Room 119 of Beeghly Center.

The course, titled “LGBTQ Issues in History and Popular Culture,” was offered for the first time this semester and is taught by Megan List, YSU assistant professor of Teacher Education. The course focuses on the history of LGBTQ issues and their portrayal in popular culture, i.e. film, music and books.

“The students have diligently worked and have produced some really interesting and comprehensive final projects,” List said.

Among the projects:

• An interpretive dance based on the experience of losing a family member to AIDS. The project included a survey about gender and sexuality, which inspired the choreography and tone for the dance piece.
• A video presentation that centers on LGBTQ history from the late 1800s. It features significant event from each decade pertaining to LGBTQ rights.
• A series of history boxes, each containing a different LGBT+ activist or a famous member of the LGBT+ community. Each side of the boxes have different facts, stories and works from each person being showcased.
• A Pride flag painted on a canvas. In the stripes of the flag is a timeline of significant LGBT+ events over history, showing that, while much work remains, much progress has been made.
• A timeline of important events and pop culture milestones in American LGBT history, starting in 1969 with the Stonewall riots, an event considered by many to be the start of the LGBT rights revolution.