Rackham alum Ana Popovic (Ph.D. ’24) was recently featured in an article from the Spectrum Center at U-M about a project she worked on during her 2023 Rackham Doctoral Intern Fellowship at the center.
“As a Ph.D. candidate wanting to apply my research skills beyond academia, I contacted Jesse [Beal, Spectrum Center director] about potential graduate intern roles,” Popovic says. “My research centers LGBTQ history, so I was thrilled when Jesse proposed a project that aligned so well with my interests.”
The project is a new interactive timeline to spotlight LGBTQ+ movements at U-M and nationally, from the late 1960s to present. The timeline offers facts and context, as well as archival photos and videos that speak to this vital aspect of the university’s history, with key moments ranging from advocacy to action, policies to people, and queer conferences to court cases.
Wanting to ensure this public resource was comprehensive, Popovic conducted interviews with past Spectrum Center directors and Michigan LGBTQ+ historian Tim Retzloff to ensure less robust areas of the archive could be remediated through first-person accounts.
“There are so many who faced challenges and created change,” Popovic says. “They all pushed things forward, as did pivotal organizations and the anonymous student protestors who you see in photos. Even if we don’t know their names, they’re part of the story. They all moved things along together.”
Explore the timeline.
Read the full story on Spectrum Center website.
