Queering the Narrative: Life Writing in the Bruce McKinney Collection

Abstract

This dissertation problematizes the definition of autobiography by considering the Bruce McKinney Collection, an archive at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas, a communal autobiography of the lesbian and gay community of Kansas. While generally used as a research tool, I argue that the archive can also be a form of life writing, consisting of a narrative that moves between documents and items found within the collection. Collected by numerous people over the course of forty years, I present the Bruce McKinney Collection as a communal autobiography of lesbian and gay life in Kansas. The archive demonstrates the lesbian and gay community's desire to acquire queer space and establish queer visibility in towns across Kansas. Through acts of resistance, whether taking legal action against a major university, proposing social changes through a city council, or by having sex in public spaces, the lesbian and gay community has reconfigured social space to accommodate their own community. In turn, the queer archive reflects the history of this change. Itself a queer space, the archive grants legitimacy to the lesbian and gay community simply by existing. It acts as a form of resistance as people have gathered and preserved the different documents that reflect lesbian and gay history. Through the resistant act of collecting lesbian and gay history, the lesbian and gay community of Kansas has created its own communal autobiography, specifically The Bruce McKinney Collection.