EP4: A Hundred Women on the Bed

A legend walks into the studio, as Yves and Clare are joined by queer royalty, Joan Nestle. In 1974, Joan founded the Lesbian Herstory Archives in her home in New York. Fifty years later, Yves and Clare ask: how DO you start an archive from scratch, especially when so much of the history you are documenting has been lived underground? Why are archives the counter-narrative to a nation’s institutional history? Can an archival collection be both narrowly defined and broadly inclusive? How did a hundred women end up on Joan’s bed? And is it ever kosher to disguise your identity to steal photos of Eleanor Roosevelt and her lover?

Lesbian Herstory Archives (official site)