Folklore MA student, Rachel Garringer, was invited to present as a part of the Queer in Appalachia Speaker Series sponsored by the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, TN on April 8, 2016. The Speaker Series was launched this spring and featured four speakers throughout March and April, including Delana Reed a professor at ETSU, Ash-lee Woodard Henderson, an organizer with the Movement for Black Lives and Project South, and Jeff Mann, a gay Appalachian fiction writer. Rachel’s presentation, “Country Queers: Surviving and Thriving in the Rural U.S.,” featured audio excerpts as well as a discussion of the history, mission, and current questions behind the multimedia oral history project she founded in 2013 called Country Queers. The presentation wrapped up with a conversation with audience members around the challenges and joys of rural Appalachian LGBTQIA life.
