Family spot in the online workshop "Trans/queer Hirstory 4 Rainbow Families"
1 family spot for the workshop below!
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Trans/queer Hirstory 4 Rainbow Families ✨An online course with Ariel Goldberg
The ongoing attack on trans/queer life is an old playbook that we can learn about. 📚
This current wave of fear and confusion surrounding trans/queer life is not new 🛟 Come together with other kin of trans /queer people with the same questions you may have. This course will provide an antidote to the confusion, fear and despair by creating a community that grows and learns together!
Sample Weekly Lecture & Discussion Topics include:
Learning the Lingo!
Support Structures for LGBTQAI youth: 1970s to the Present
Community Based News
Allyish! What Can you DO?
Hypervisibility of Trans/queer Life
The Culture Wars
Decoding Laws Today
Wild Card! Participants Request a Topic!
Why Political Education? Trans and queer hirstory of the last fifty years has blueprints for day-to-day actions and support for those we love. The current repression of trans and queer life through the schools, public space, state legislatures, and the healthcare system relies on old strategies trans and queer people have fought against before–and won!
Course Format: This course will use short history presentations followed by a space to ask hard questions, brainstorm and share resources. Together we will learn about the joys of trans/queer life so we can support trans and queer youth and adults most impacted in this current moment.
Goals: Participants will gain a robust understanding of our current political moment by learning about real-life trans and queer organizing, media projects, and mutual-aid projects for healthcare, education, and housing. This course is designed to arm us with hirstory–by learning from actual survival and how to fight fascist authoritarianism.
Accessibility: When registering for the course, we ask for you to tell us any access needs and questions you may have about the course. Taylor Cook, the Course Manager, and I are here to support and build this course as a place for your learning and growth.
Participation: Asynchronous participation is welcome! What does that mean? Participants can miss classes and keep up with recorded lectures and transcripts or simply attend when they can. Each week, participants will receive suggested readings, resources, and discussion prompts that they can engage before or after class time. Participants are welcome to show up to class without doing any homework.
Digital Security: Participants can join class anonymously to protect their privacy.
Who might take this course: Parents of trans/queer kids who want to deepen their allyship! You are welcome to take the course with members of your family or solo. Teenage kids, romantic partners, best friends, grandparents, siblings, aunties, uncles, cousins, whoever is in your chosen family is welcome! The materials will discuss mature topics such as police violence, HIV/AIDS, and sex & gender based discrimination.
Size: 12 families
WHEN: June 11-July 30, 2025
8 weeks, Wednesday Nights
7-9pm ET / 4-7pm PT
WHERE: ONLINE! Join from anywhere!
Asynchronous participants are welcome; while all lectures are audio-recorded & circulated, discussions will not be recorded.
COST: $1,000 per family (up to four seats!)
$500 for solo enrollment
Venmo, Zelle, or bank transfer
Payment plans available / If this course is not financially accessible to you please stay tuned for Ariel's next sliding scale workshop!
If you cannot join at this time slot, and are interested in learning with us, please reach out to seekingcaptionscourse@gmail.com about your availability–if there is sufficient interest, we will open a 2nd section of the course.
Sign up here, and you will receive an email with next steps.
About the instructor: Ariel Goldberg is a writer, curator, and educator devoted to trans and queer lineages. Goldberg’s books include The Estrangement Principle (Nightboat Books, 2016) and The Photographer (Roof Books, 2015). Their exhibition on photography’s relationship to spaces for learning, Images on which to build, 1970s-1990s, was on view at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati as part of the 2022 FotoFocus Biennial, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in NYC, and the Chicago Cultural Center from 2022-2024. Goldberg was a recipient of the 2020 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Book Grant and a 2024 Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellow at the New York Public Library. Goldberg has taught photography, writing, and contemporary art practices independently and at Bard College, The New School, New York University, Pratt Institute, Cooper Union, and Rutgers University. Goldberg also works independently as a Conflict Mediator, trained through the New York Peace Institute.
IG: @r.e.l.goldberg