Lessons in Hidden History

STUDENTS | You might think a political science, sociology, and gender, sexuality, and women's studies triple-major who juggled three jobs while carrying a full course load during the past school year would want to take a break over the summer. But, as with hundreds of UVM students who take part in summer internships and research projects, downtime was not on the agenda this year for Zane Zupan, a junior from Manchester, Vt., with a passion for LGBTQ+ history. Instead, having amassed a sizeable TikTok following over the past few years for their thoughtful commentaries on politics and current events, Zupan (who uses the pronouns they/them) applied for and received an award from UVM’s Brennan Summer Research Fellowship Fund to be used for a somewhat unconventional research project.

Called “Making Queer History Accessible to LGBTQ+ Youth During a Period of Targeted Erasure,” Zupan’s project educates viewers about key historical LGBTQ+ events, parsing them into mini history lessons tailor-made for Gen Z. “I designed the project to help make it easier for the younger generations to digest and interact with LGBTQ+ history, which is more important than ever as states across the U.S. actively work to censor this history,” Zupan says. Their goal is to provide young people, especially those in school districts and states in which virtually anything queer-related has been banned or restricted—think books, drag shows, gender-affirming care—with a reliable source of easy-to-digest LGBTQ+ history via TikTok videos.