Finding trans community in the archive

Fourth-year English and art history student Sky Dragushan is blending their study of literature and art history to gain archival research experience that they hope will equip them for a graduate program in library and archival studies.

After years visiting Victoria for Passover and falling in love with Vancouver Island, UVic was Dragushan’s only choice for post-secondary study. “I knew I wanted to study English, and UVic’s English department is phenomenal,” they say. At the time, they had no idea that UVic is also home to the world’s largest trans archive, but they would eventually find themself deep in that archive, studying the formation of trans community through newsletters.

Reflecting on their interest in archival studies, Dragushan credits a focused course that they took early in their degree: “In my second year, I took ENSH 483: In the Archives with Dr. Adrienne Williams Boyarin. We learned how to read and analyze these archival manuscripts, about ink and parchment. It was so fascinating, and I wanted to know if I could do this as a career. That was the catalyst.”

As a recipient of a Valerie Kuehne Undergraduate Research Award (supervised by Dr. Trevor Van Damme), Dragushan had already fostered an interest in public and community-centred history, researching textile tools found at Eleon, Greece on an archaeological field school. A move into the archives was a logical next step.

In their third year, Dragushan’s aspirations towards a career in archives were affirmed when they were selected as a Peter and Ana Lowens University of Victoria Libraries Special Collections Student Fellow. The fellowship provides undergraduate researchers with faculty and librarian support for a research project using materials from UVic Libraries Special Collections and University Archives. In addition to this mentorship, student fellows participate in workshops about book and archival history, tailored to the interests of the cohort.

“We did a paper-making workshop with Frances Hunter, and we went out to West Saanich and were pounding mulch with these wooden mallets to turn into paper,” recalls Dragushan.

During the fellowship, Dragushan took a deep dive into the Transgender Archives, focusing on the trans newsletter FTM, inspired by the fact that few scholars have studied the publication.

“FTM focused on news, and there was also a question and answer section called the ‘male box,’ and that piece was so instrumental in building trans community, because you were able to speak to real trans people about taboo topics. In a lot of the newsletters, there are questions about sex or advertisements for sex toys or pornography,” Dragushan explains. “That was huge in establishing that this was a trans space, this is how we do things, from sex to clothes to gender-affirming care.”

Dragushan frames their time in the archives as an opportunity for learning and expanding their understanding of transmasculine history and community. Conducting a publication history of FTM by combing through archived issues, they could understand where issues were published and how they were printed and distributed, finally completing a physical exhibit in the Special Collections Reading Room and a project website presenting their research.

Following up on their research on FTM, Dragushan is continuing to explore trans+ history in GNDR 219: Intro to Trans Histories, taught by Vanier scholar and PhD candidate Jamey Jesperson. When the class visited the Transgender Archives, Dragushan was excited to show off the issues of FTM that they got to read and study during their fellowship.

“Because of my experience with the Lowens fellowship, I got to present my research at the Crossing Fonds Digital Archives Symposium in Vancouver,” says Dragushan. “It felt really rewarding to get to present my research at a conference as an undergrad.”

As they look to a future in libraries and archives, Dragushan continues to pursue hands-on, community-focused research by volunteering with Arizona State University’s SolarSPELL Initiative, which provides localized libraries to communities in regions with limited or no internet access, working with communities to determine local library needs. Leveraging their experience creating educational arts programming as a camp counsellor and the knowledge they’ve gained by studying art history, Dragushan is helping curate more arts-focused content for the libraries and reorganizing the existing content to be more user-friendly.

"The dream is to be an art librarian, working in a gallery’s library holdings or in archives or special collections with rare books and manuscripts. I can also see myself as a children’s or public librarian.”

For now, they want to keep using digital tools to make Humanities research more accessible. That goal informed the project website for their Lowens research, and has shaped their approach to archival research more broadly.

I want the trans community, especially, to be able to find this research.”

— Sky Dragushan

After all, if the original materials that Dragushan is studying helped build crucial community spaces, so can researching and understanding them.