Stories of Stonewall Warehouse: Queer Memories of Space and Place and its Potential for Queer Worldmaking

This thesis examines queer public memory and how queer people communicate the significance of queer space, place, and worldmaking through their memories. Through a qualitative study of Stonewall Warehouse, the only gay bar in San Marcos, Texas that closed in 2023, I utilized autoethnography and open-ended questionnaires to investigate how former patrons, performers, and staff recall Stonewall as a queer place and space and what Stonewall has meant to them after its closure. My analysis revealed how interactive and representative artifacts depicted Stonewall as a queer place within a southern college town. For creating queer space, participants described general queer space, safe spaces, and queer friend spaces. Through interactions, patrons, performers, and staff co-created queer worldmaking at Stonewall Warehouse as a comforting, safe environment and community for queer people. Through an analysis of public memory, responses revealed how participants memorialize Stonewall by seeking out new queer places, associating themselves with local queer organizations, and through the preservations of memories and stories. By connecting my autoethnographic vignettes to participants’ responses, I combine my experiences at Stonewall Warehouse as a Mexican American, gay man from a traditional Catholic household to my participants to show how our identities shape our queer experiences and memories. Overall, this research showcases the impact of the preservation of queer public memory and calls for the creation of more local queer archives where queer people can share their experiences of queer space and place. In addition, it theorizes queer worldmaking within queer places by illustrating their interconnections and invites future researchers to continue to add to the field of Queer Communication Studies.

Author dc:creator

• Manriquez, Hector

Contributors dc:contributor

• Eger, Elizabeth K.
• Austin, Jasmine T.
• Mandziuk, Roseann M.

• queer space
• queer place
• queer memory
• queer autoethnography
• disidentification
• Autoethnography
• queer of color worldmaking
• qualitative research
• queer methods
• Latino
• queer
• gay bars
• stonewall
• queer communication

Language dc:language

en

Identifier

Manriquez, H. (2024). Stories of stonewall warehouse: Queer memories of space and place and its potential for queer worldmaking [Master's thesis, Texas State University].

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:tdl-ir.tdl.org:10877/18661