Related Audio Materials

Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold by Madeline Davis and Elizabeth Kennedy is an intimate history of a lesbian community in Buffalo, New York. Ranging from the mid-1930s through the early 1960s, this ethnography of lesbian society is narrated with the backdrop of an average American city. The project is the result of 13 years of research, including an extensive oral history project. The "Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: Related Audio Recordings" collection contains supplementary audio materials related to the research and production of Boots of Leather.

These recordings range from conference proceedings to panel discussions to phone messages from book publishers. In each case, these related materials form an important element of the research, enriching and contextualizing the interviews conducted as part of the Buffalo Women's Oral History Project. They discuss topics such as the publishing process and initial responses to the draft manuscript, the work of lesbian archives in researching and documenting the emergence of lesbian communities and lesbian consciousness across America, and how the research conducted into a small lesbian community in Buffalo, NY fits into a wider social narrative of establishing gay and lesbian identity and the development of gay and lesbian liberation movements.

These recordings were donated to the archives by Madeline Davis and Elizabeth Kennedy, and were subsequently digitized by students from the Pratt Institute, Projects in Digital Archives class, LIS-665.