I Know A Place We Can Go: The Spatiality of Lesbian Subjectivity and the Revival of Lesbian Spaces

Author

Bailey Burke, College of the Holy CrossFollow

Date of Creation

5-15-2025

Document Type

Thesis

First Advisor

Carmen Jarrin

Second Advisor

Jeremy Jones

Abstract

It is no secret that lesbian spaces today are not what they once were. These iconic nexuses of lesbian community, identity, and relationships, lesbian spaces are now, at best, few and far between, and at worst, only found in memories of what used to be. At the end of the twentieth-century, there were over two-hundred lesbian bars in operation in the United States; as of 2025, there are only a few dozen left. Other lesbian spaces, such as lesbian bookstores—once notable lesbian symbols and integral parts of dyke pop culture—have now been almost entirely replaced by the queer section at Barnes & Noble, or on Amazon. However, though they are few, those lesbian spaces which do remain have not only managed to survive themselves, but have also kept alive, or revitalized, the lesbian communities around them. Through an autoethnographic approach to participant-observation of the lesbian community events at Bookends in Florence (the self-proclaimed “last lesbian bookstore in western mass.”) and interviews with members of lesbian communities from western Massachusetts, I explore the survival of lesbian communities through the survival and maintenance of lesbian space. In addition to existing scholarship on the intrinsic relationship between spatiality and subjectivity, I argue that lesbian subjectivity is inherently constituted through the production of lesbian space. In order to revitalize lesbian community and promote a positive subjectivity, lesbian spaces must return first.

Comments

Reader: Professor Sarah Klotz

Recommended Citation

Burke, Bailey, "I Know A Place We Can Go: The Spatiality of Lesbian Subjectivity and the Revival of Lesbian Spaces" (2025). College Honors Program. 605.
https://crossworks.holycross.edu/honors/605