Tuesday, April 1, 2025

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Rainbows and Mud: Pathways to Queer Thriving in a Marginalizing Society

Nic Weststrate, Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology, University of Illinois Chicago

The over 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced to state legislatures in 2024 are a painful reminder that circumstances framing LGBTQ+ lives haven’t gotten much better despite promises of progress and no shortage of hope. A subset of these bills concern LGBTQ+ curriculum censorship and book bans—bans that threaten LGBTQ+ people’s access to knowledge necessary for surviving and thriving in a marginalizing and increasingly hostile society. Such limitations around access to knowledge are conceptualized here as an epistemic injustice. Drawing from six years of research, this lecture will explore the ways that LGBTQ+ communities counter epistemic injustice by coming together across generations for social connection, storytelling, and wisdom-sharing. The studies leverage multiple methods, including an innovative letter-writing paradigm, close observations of intergenerational dyadic storytelling exchanges, and a multi-year community-engaged ethnographic experiment. By shining a light on the joys and challenges of LGBTQ+ intergenerational engagement, glimmers of a better future for LGBTQ+ people are made visible.

The program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the departments of psychology, women’s, gender & sexuality studies, sociology, educational studies and English and the LGBTQ+ Center. It part of the Clarke Forum’s annual theme, Alternative Models.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Headshot of Nic WeststrateDr. Nic M. Weststrate is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois Chicago, as well as a faculty affiliate of the Community and Applied Developmental Psychology program in the Department of Psychology, and a member of the Center for Research on Health and Aging in the Institute for Health Research and Policy. Trained as a lifespan developmental psychologist at the University of Toronto, Nic’s mixed-disciplinary research uses multiple methods to investigate and promote positive aging within LGBTQ+ communities. At the heart of his research is the belief that intergenerational storytelling is crucial to the health and well-being of LGBTQ+ elders and youth, and also necessary for sustaining LGBTQ+ cultures and histories, which are at risk of being silenced, distorted, and erased by anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. Nic’s work has appeared in journals such as Developmental Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Review, Psychological Inquiry, Perspectives on Psychological Science, and American Psychologist. His community research partners include the Pride in Aging program at the Center on Halsted, the Midwest’s largest LGBTQ+ community center, and the AIDS Foundation Chicago.

Related Link

www.generationliberation.com