Illuminating Atlanta’s Queer History Through Buttons

Posted March 7, 2023

Digital Media Ph.D. student Alexandra Teixeira Riggs found an innovative way to bring life to a collection of buttons that offer a window into Atlanta’s LGBTQ community in the 1970s. Riggs used digital storytelling techniques to pair each button with oral histories of two local queer activists.

“Buttons are important because not only are they signals of political and social causes, but they're also identity signifiers,” Riggs said. “When you're putting one on, you're signaling something that you believe in or some part of your identity to another person, and this has historically been central to queer communities.”

To learn more about Riggs’ research, read New Research Embodies Queer History Through Artifacts