After Hours: Queering Local Histories (Mill Valley)

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Traditionally, mainstream history museums have ignored the existence of LGBTQ+ people in the past. Only in the past fifteen years or so have these institutions begun to include the LGBTQ+ experiences in their narratives, and the results have been fascinating.

Join historian Susan Ferentinos as she discusses her experiences helping museums across the country apply a queer lens to their work—searching out LGBTQ+ local histories and deciding how to incorporate this information into the larger stories they are already telling.

Using Bay Area historic sites as a case study, with plenty of other examples as well, Ferentinos will explore what we can learn when we ask new questions about the past.

About the Speaker

Susan Ferentinos, PhD, is a public history consultant working with cultural organizations to expand the stories they tell about the past. She has participated in multiple LGBTQ+ history projects in the San Francisco Bay Area, and a project she led on the LGBTQ+ history of Maryland won the 2025 Allan Berube Public History Award from the LGBTQ+ History Association. Ferentinos is the author of the book Interpreting LGBT History at Museums and Historic Sites, and a book she edited, The Queer Side of Ridgefield: LGBTQIA+ Experiences of Ridgefield, Connecticut, is due out this summer. She also serves on the advisory board for the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.