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In 2025 and 2026, I was selected by CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center and the Barnard Center for Research on Women to architect, facilitate, and publish The Inaugural Amber Hollibaugh Seminar in the City: Queer Economies of Care. Designed as an interdisciplinary, six-week public seminar hosted at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division in NYC, the program convened an intergenerational cohort of 26 residents aged 20 to 76 to examine how historical mutual aid networks, kinship systems, and community-rooted care can inform modern institutional resilience and civic infrastructure.

As Lead Instructor and Curriculum Architect, I developed a qualitative learning model that paired foundational texts (Audre Lorde, Dean Spade, Alexis Pauline Gumbs) with real-time ethnographic inquiry, cross-generational dialogue, and guest practitioner sessions. I facilitated trust-based, multi-stakeholder discussions addressing complex systemic challenges—including gentrification, carceral displacement, and economic survival—and synthesized real-time participant research into a permanent institutional collection housed at the Mina Rees Library at CUNY Graduate Center. The initiative culminated in a co-edited, publication-grade research archive and public report, demonstrating how community-led research frameworks can build durable organizational memory and bridge grassroots networks with higher education institutions.

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Highlights:

  • Architected and executed the inaugural curriculum framework for CUNY/CLAGS and Barnard Center for Research on Women

  • Facilitated intergenerational, multi-stakeholder dialogues for a 26-person cohort across diverse socioeconomic and age demographics

  • Designed a qualitative synthesis methodology to capture, edit, and publish participant research into the permanent CUNY Mina Rees Library Archive

  • Translated complex socio-political theories of care and mutual aid into actionable public pedagogy and institutional publication engines

    Co-Sponsors & Partners: CUNY Graduate Center (CLAGS), Barnard Center for Research on Women (BCRW), Bureau of General Services—Queer Division

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Images courtesy of CLAGS and Ralph Hopkins.