'Rust and Stone: Stonewall 50 and the Madeline Davis LGBTQ+ Archive of Western New York'

Buffalo State College is pleased to welcome Jeffry Iovannone, coordinator of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at SUNY Fredonia, who will present "Rust and Stone: Stonewall 50 and the Madeline Davis LGBTQ+ Archive of Western New York" on Saturday, November 2, from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. in the Burchfield Penney Art Center's Tower Auditorium. His talk is part of the third biennial E. H. Butler Library Archives and Special Collections Charles Rand Penney Speaker Series, presented by E. H. Butler Library Archives and Special Collections in association with the Burchfield Penney Art Center and Buffalo State’s Bengal Allies. A reception will follow the talk and Q&A. The event is free and open to the public.

Based on his book project about gay liberation in Buffalo, New York, Iovannone uses the Madeline Davis LGBTQ+ Archive of Western New York to complicate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Inn riots. Through an analysis of the founding of the Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier, Buffalo's first gay and lesbian civil rights organization, he challenges the significance of Stonewall within the history of the American LGBTQ+ rights movement, arguing for a holistic narrative of LGBTQ+ history that takes into account the lives and experiences of LGBTQ+ people in Rust Belt cities such as Buffalo. Finally, he discusses how Buffalo State’s Madeline Davis Archive provides a blueprint for LGBTQ+ social change outside of coastal American cities today.

Iovannone completed his Ph.D. in American studies at the University at Buffalo and is currently a full-time lecturer in interdisciplinary studies at SUNY Fredonia. He has extensively mined Buffalo State’s Madeline Davis and associated LGBTQ+ collections for his previous, current, and upcoming research and publications.

Free parking will be available in the Burchfield Penney Art Center lot.