Hundreds of Emerson students pass through the Iwasaki Library every day. However, most are unaware that tucked away in archives boxes that lie on the second floor of the Walker Building are countless one-of-a-kind historical records.

Emerson Archives and Special Collections houses thousands of physical and digitized archive material, some relating to the theater community throughout the 20th century, and including many items with queer representation. That is why archivists at Emerson—along with dozens of other institutions across the world—have contributed to the Digital Transgender Archive, an online international hub for transgender history that is based in Boston. 

“The theater community has tended to be more inclusive of various groups over the years,” said Jennifer Williams, the assistant director for archives and special collections at Emerson. “I think you see that reflected [in our collections], but also we don’t want to misrepresent history … It shows the treatment of that community throughout the years, both the good and the very bad at times.”

According to its website, the DTA is a collaboration focused on “digitally localizing a wide range of trans-related materials” and expanding “access to trans history for academics and independent researchers.”

The DTA defines the term transgender as “a broad and inclusive range of non-normative gender practices,” and treats being transgender “as a practice rather than an identity.” The archive houses materials from anywhere in the world, using a Scope Flow Chart to determine what material they collect.

“Trans history is an extraordinary balance between the recognition that people have always wanted to explore gender, and the recognition that they’ve constantly redefined what this means,” said Isaac Fellman, the assistant director of the DTA.

Since 2018, the archives and special collections team has contributed 10 collections of theater and performance related material to the DTA and is in the process of adding more.

K.J. Rawson, director of Northeastern University’s Humanities Center, created the DTA 10 years ago in an effort to increase accessibility of transgender history “by providing an online hub for digitized historical materials.” 

“Although it’s impossible for archives to scan everything, the DTA [strives] to tell that polyphonous, choral trans history that’s only possible when institutions work together,” said Fellman.

Matthew McMahan, an assistant professor of comedic studies at Emerson, used the Archives’ New York Clipper collection for a project in his Evolution of Comedy class. The Clipper served as a place where many Vaudeville and stage performers of the 19th and 20th century registered works.

“If your job was to juggle poodles and that’s your schtick, you could say ‘I was first because I registered here,’” said McMahan. “Of course, that had no legal bearing … but it’s a bunch of people we know were performers [who] thought they had something original … which tells us a lot about what was happening on that stage—stuff that we have no evidence of otherwise.”

Students in McMahan’s class select an item from the Clipper archives and adapt or restage it as if they are the performers. The collection, although not explicitly about gender nonconforming people, holds a lot of potential for good and bad representation, according to McMahn.

“Absolutely there were gay Vaudeville performers. How out of the closet they were? You never know,” said McMahan. “That said there are a ton of drag acts in the Clipper registry.”

Many Vaudeville tropes used drag to play on stereotypes that the present day finds offensive—like the Nance—a stereotypically “camp” gay man—or the Dame—a sexist portrayal of women, said McMahan. 

“Historians have revealed [that] a lot of the Nances were performed by in the closet gay men,” he said. “You could imagine anybody performing drag on stage in Vaudeville might have been doing so because that’s where they could actually perform the gender they know they are.”

Of the collections that Emerson has contributed to the DTA, some are digitized and available for anyone to view online, such as the Sarah Moore Field Collection, which contains theater programs and playbills from the late 1880s to early 1960s in Boston and New York.

The Elinor Hughes Collection, which is not fully digitized yet, is a collection of volumes of articles from Hughes’s career as the first woman drama critic for a major Boston newspaper theater. 

Williams says the archivists are in the process of fully digitizing over 70,000 audio recordings and other media from the Reverend Warren Debenham Comedy Sound Collection, from the late minister in California, author of the book “Comedy on Record” and consultant for several well-known comedians.

“Warren accepted everyone for who they were, which I really loved about him,” said Williams. “He was a huge promoter of comedy for his entire life, and he collected all things comedy. There is a lot of representation of the trans community, and what I like about that collection is that it’s the trans community talking for themselves, not people talking about them.”

Appropriately digitizing material is important to ensuring records last, says Archives and Special Collections digital archivist, Michelle Romero. Preserving digital archives doesn’t stop after digitization and includes scanning documents in the highest resolution in various formats and checking files periodically to ensure they haven’t been corrupted.

Williams said that the digitization work that people do like Romero and Melissa DiBerardino, the digital access and reference archivist, is “so important” because it allows researchers in another country or at another archive, like the DTA, more access to these collections.

On the flipside, McMahan said a safe home for physical archives is always important, but especially right now when digital archives “are under attack and can be removed,” referring to President Donald Trump’s recent attempts to stymie the historical existence of trans people. Recently, references to transgender people from the Stonewall National Monument and the National Parks Service websites have been deleted.

The archives team also tries to collect and maintain present-time materials from the Emerson community for the future, says DiBerardino, which could help remove those historically systemic barriers to accessing queer history.

“Trans people have existed throughout history and throughout Emerson’s history,” she said. “I think this school has done an amazing job of inclusivity and we can always do better, so I think highlighting these collections is a way to not only promote the archives, but promote these communities.”

McMahan felt that the Emerson community was in a unique position with the level of physical archival access they have, unlike those who rely on digital access like the DTA.

“Some of these people don’t exist anywhere else but this collection, right?” he said. “I notice when students interact with these materials, they are fascinated because they are touching history. It’s a real tangible experience that you can’t get anywhere else.”