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Meet Fran Watson: Queer Black Houston Lawyer and Activist Seeks Texas Senate Seat

Posted on October 10, 2017
A photo of Texas Senate District 17 candidate Fran Watson.

As an assistant professor of Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies and Comparative Cultural Studies at University of Houston, I’m particularly thrilled to see candidates who make the Texas political landscape reflective of the diversity of Houston. I’ve had the privilege of getting to know Fran Watson through the city’s LGBTQ activist networks, and have seen her consistently show up to serve and engage with many different Texas communities. Fran and I traveled to Austin together this spring—as part of a…

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Love is Love is Love: Producing Queer Theatre in the Deep South

Posted on October 9, 2017
A photo from Glow Lyric Theatre's production of Love is Love is Love

I booked a venue for the evening of Valentine’s Day, and asked 10 LGBTQ singers, actors, dancers, poets, and artists from the community to help me jump-start the project. We all gathered together. Unsure of how to start, I asked everyone what message they wanted the piece to convey. At this question, the room bubbled over with stories of young love, first times, heartbreak, and the loss of love. Their vulnerability reminded me that the feelings and situations surrounding love…

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Teaching Queer Houston: Part One

Posted on October 4, 2017
A photo of queer Houston participating in a Pride march against Anita Bryant.

When I began teaching Intro to LGBT Studies at the University of Houston in Fall 2016, I barely took the local queer community into consideration when I designed the course. Aside from having my students watch the documentary A Murder in Montrose about the Paul Broussard murder in 1991, my course was largely void of queer Houston content. This was surprising given my focus on local communities in my research and advocacy work. Even so, while discussing the events following Paul…

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Exploring Identity: How Spectrum South Inspired College Students to Embrace Their Truths

Posted on August 4, 2017
Illustration of diverse people exploring identity.

Shortly after my summer class began, Spectrum South launched with its series of narrative pieces in which the publication’s core group of writers explored their own queer and southern identities. While each piece was unique to the writer, all of them spoke to the intersections of identity and journeys of queer self-discovery. This inspired me to use these pieces—written by queer millennials—to get my students thinking about their own identities (queer and not) on a deeper level. Each student was…

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