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Blending social science, fine arts, and the humanities, Rural Queer Joy explores how the telling of rural LGBTQ+ stories affects young rural queer people today. The stories of well-known Wyoming LGBTQ+ people like Matthew Shepard, Sissy Goodwin, and Artemis Langford often center experiences of trauma and hardship, leaving little space for experiences of triumph or joy.
Author Jennifer Tabler and photographer Bailey Russel provided rural LGBTQ+ community members with an opportunity to represent their own experiences through participation in a social practice art project, asking what about being LGBTQ+ brings them joy. They then took the participants’ portraits and invited them to annotate these portraits with paint, markers, paper, or other media. This kind of social practice art provides an opportunity to engage in epistemic activism through the self-empowerment of marginalized voices and perspectives, while also centering visuals of rural queer people that counter existing stereotypes and add nuance to our understanding of rural LGBTQ+ people.
The dynamic artwork and quotes from young rural LGBTQ+ people displayed in this book highlight how their identities are sources of joy and opportunity rather than constraint and hardship. Rural and/or LGBTQ+ people, researchers, and teachers in the fields of community-engaged arts, gender studies, sociology of sexualities, and public humanities will find inspiration in Rural Queer Joy—inspiration to rethink what it means to be rural and LGBTQ+ as well as to use social practice art to increase the visibility of other underserved communities.
“A rich and fascinating book, an absolute joy to read.”
—Laurel Westbrook, University of California, Santa Barbara
Jennifer Tabler is associate professor of sociology in the Department of Criminal Justice and Sociology at the University of Wyoming. Her research focuses on the well-being of rural residents and communities. She was awarded Wyoming Equality’s Frontier Visibility Award for her project Queer on the Frontier as well as the Sociological Insight Award for her research examining the lasting impact of Matthew Shepard’s legacy on rural LGBTQ+ young people.
Bailey Russel is a senior lecturer of photography in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Wyoming. His research focuses on land use in the American West. Russel was a Wyoming Arts Fellowship recipient in 2023 for his project Western Extraction, which looked at Wyoming’s mining industries.