
Photo of Brylan Cole
Author: Brylan Cole | Major: Sculpture + Experimental Media | Semester: Spring 2025
Growing up in rural Arkansas, I learned early that some family stories were told in whispers.
There was always that great-aunt who “never found the right man,” or the uncle who lived
with his “best friend” for forty years in a house with one bedroom. These fragments of family
lore, passed down like secrets, sparked something in me—a recognition that the South I
knew was far more complex than the narratives I saw reflected in media or academia.
My research project, The Queer South: Examining Regional and Personal Experiences and
Their Impact on Queer Identity, emerged from this personal curiosity but evolved into
something much larger. Through archival research, oral history collection, and mixed-media
artistic creation, I’m documenting the rich but systematically erased history of LGBTQ+
Southerners. The project addresses a critical gap in regional scholarship while creating
tangible resources for isolated queer communities. Beyond academic contribution, this work
provides representation for LGBTQ+ Southerners who rarely see their experiences reflected
in cultural narratives, preserves vanishing oral histories from elder generations, and
challenges persistent stereotypes about Southern identity that exclude entire populations.
The path to this research felt very intuitive. As a gay Southerner, I am constantly in search of
community, and keenly aware of when it is not present. My experience taught me the impact
of including diverse narratives and how excluding entire communities, often without
conscious intention, can be detrimental.
When I approached Professor Bethany Springer about mentoring an interdisciplinary project
combining historical research with artistic interpretation, she immediately grasped both its
academic potential and its community significance. Her expertise in socially engaged art
practices made her the ideal collaborator for work that needed to function simultaneously as
scholarship, activism, and creative expression. More importantly, she understood that for this
project to succeed, it had to honor both intellectual rigor and emotional truth.
Researching marginalized histories requires detective work. Traditional archives rarely
contain explicit documentation of LGBTQ+ experiences, particularly in the South where such
identities were often criminalized or socially dangerous. I learned to read between the
lines—searching for coded language, unexplained living arrangements, and suspicious gaps
in records.
My breakthrough came through conversations with the Gerber/Hart Library and Archives in
Chicago, which connected me to a network of queer archival resources I never knew
existed. Reading Brock Thompson’s The Un-Natural State: Arkansas and the Queer South
revealed that my home state had documented LGBTQ+ history extending back generations,
hidden in plain sight.
But the most profound discoveries came through oral history collection. Sitting in living
rooms of family members, documenting conversations with queer elders who had rarely
been asked about their experiences, I encountered stories of remarkable resilience and
creativity. These weren’t tales of simple oppression or inevitable exodus—they were complex
narratives of people who built meaningful lives, relationships, and communities despite
systemic hostility.
Each story challenged my assumptions about what queer Southern life looked like
historically and continues to look like today. I learned that resistance takes many forms, from
the quiet courage of maintaining long-term partnerships in hostile environments to the bold
activism of those who fought for visibility despite personal risk.
This research demanded both intellectual and emotional labor that I hadn’t anticipated.
Documenting stories of discrimination, loss, and systematic exclusion—including the
devastating impact of the AIDS epidemic on potential mentors and
knowledge-keepers—required developing new forms of resilience.
The most significant methodological challenge involved the inherent difficulty of researching
deliberately hidden histories. When official records don’t exist, and oral traditions have been
disrupted by decades of shame and loss, how do you reconstruct authentic narratives? I
developed a multi-pronged approach combining formal archival research with family
investigations and community oral history work, cross-referencing sources whenever
possible and being transparent about gaps and uncertainties.
While Professor Springer provided excellent guidance, this project has benefited from
broader institutional support with faculty and students invested in equity-focused research
across disciplines generously offering their stories, resources, and knowledge.
The interdisciplinary nature of this work—combining art, history, and media
studies—required conversations with experts across departments. Faculty members helped
me understand regional history contexts, research methodologies, and ethical
considerations for working with vulnerable populations.
The process of transforming research into art has been equally revelatory. I am still in a very
experimental part of the creative process. Currently, I have been creating mixed-media
collages that layer historical photographs with contemporary materials, allowing past and
present queer Southern experiences to create a visual dialogue. This artistic component
doesn’t simply illustrate research findings—it offers new ways of understanding and
connecting with these histories emotionally and intellectually.
This fall marks the intensive studio phase where months of research transform into a
cohesive body of artwork. The work will culminate in an exhibition in the Spring of 2026. The
exhibition represents not an endpoint but a beginning—I’m already exploring opportunities
for the work to travel and developing digital components that could reach isolated LGBTQ+
Southerners who might benefit from seeing their experiences reflected in art and
scholarship.
This research project has fundamentally shaped my understanding of what academic work
can accomplish. I’ve learned that research can be simultaneously deeply personal and
rigorously scholarly, that art can function as both documentation and intervention, and that
the most important stories are often those that risk being forgotten without deliberate effort to
preserve them.
The SURF and Honors College Research Grant didn’t just fund my research—it validated
the idea that personal questions can drive meaningful scholarship, and that academic work
at its best creates more understanding, more representation, and more possibilities for
connection across differences.